urbanSTL

^ Their headquarters in SF is in a huge building. Similar to a Railway Exchange Building.



With that said, I highly doubt they would move from SF to STL. Could you imagine the outrage in the tech world? Now that Jack Dorsey is CEO, I could see them opening up an operation here. Which would be huge in its own right. Something similar to Square with a few hundred back office jobs sounds more realistic to me. I do think STL has serious potential at being a second tier tech market, which will definitely have huge benefits for the region. Hell if we had a tenth of the tech growth seen in the Bay Area, it would change the region in a big way, specifically the central corridor. I do think we are just scratching the surface of our tech journey and we will definitely get some spillage from the coast, how much is remained to be seen. It does seem like we are starting to see some momentum. What I'm more excited about is the potential of homegrown companies taking root and being as big as a Twitter or Facebook. Just imagine if St. Louis had its crap together just 10 years ago, maybe Twitter and Square would be located here with their 3,000+ employees. Gabe Lazano has the right idea, clustering all those companies downtown would be awesome. 1,000 startups downtown could be huge, all you would need is a few of them to get big and it could change the F500 rankings, that's just how fast this stuff works.

FirSTLove wrote:Take this with a grain of salt but I am friends with the daughter of a CEO from a major company in the region and according to her Twitter will be moving their HEADQUARTERS to St. Louis by 2017. Not only did she sound confident about this, she backed it up with actions her family's company was doing to invest in STL (It's well documented on NextSTL) to prepare for this game changer for the city and region. In this town I don't believe anything until I see it but given the source and information I received, I am ecstatic to see this come to fruition.

Bunge? Bull Moose?

FirSTLove wrote:Take this with a grain of salt but I am friends with the daughter of a CEO from a major company in the region and according to her Twitter will be moving their HEADQUARTERS to St. Louis by 2017. Not only did she sound confident about this, she backed it up with actions her family's company was doing to invest in STL (It's well documented on NextSTL) to prepare for this game changer for the city and region. In this town I don't believe anything until I see it but given the source and information I received, I am ecstatic to see this come to fruition.

Can you elaborate on the investments her CEO parent is making?

We haven't had a rumor like this since GoneCorporate's infamous Google tease....

debaliviere wrote:

What does this mean?

I wonder if Square's move to add employee's have to do with a reality check of the high cost of doing business in San Fran from leases, to offering a competitive salary in one of most expensive housing markets in the states. Square didn't have a very good quarter and controlling costs take on new meaning when you are public vs. private equity looking for the pay day at IPO.

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco ... yment.html

While I take the Twitter HQ move to St. Louis with the huge mound of salt instead of a grain of salt as Debaliviere suggest. I can see Dorsey as CEO of both taking a serious look at costs and seeing opportunity of relocating back office work to St. Louis. Which makes a lot of sense with Jim's efforts on Launch code and connections to Wash U, etc.

Who knows RW, maybe Dorsey is about to pull a Uber move, but instead of buying a building outright in downtown Oakland he is reaching little farther East to St. Louis. But it might too much on its too good of a rumor to be true to start thinking that Dorsey would want to buy the railway exchange building in order to relocate a big chunk of Twitter's back office staff and build out his own data center.

Of course, if Twitter doesn't start actually making money, all of this will be moot.

roger wyoming II wrote:^^ stlien, take things with whatever dose of salt you like, but the rumors are insane with action on the 4260/TechShop, Crescent Building and the cleared Wexford site. While I have no idea who the tenants will be, I expect some exciting news sooner rather than later.

Oh ok, thanks.

Framer, you can make the case on a business standpoint that Twitter would entertain such a move to drastically trim its cost now that it is a publically traded company and the tech venture capitalist got its IPO/cash back. Like you side, Twitter has to start delivering earnings, margins and or stock gains as well as cost savings to its investors or it is all moot. It certainly doesn't nor unlikely will have the huge revenue generation as a Google or an Apple in the tech world. Nor do I think it can argue the long ball as Amazon's business model allowed it to go years in the red before becoming a retail and tech/cloud space giant.

Which gets me on a wild idea. Who/What is the money behind TierPoint's acquisitions? In some respects, it seems logical to me that Square or even Twitter would gobble up an expanding data center business to build up a bigger cloud. I guess my argument, A financial service business like Square building a cloud based business makes just as much as sense as Amazon being a retail developing its own monster cloud provider. They might be doing that already but you really don't read much about it from a business revenue perspective.

Prediction: Twitter relocates HQ and 800 jobs from the coast to Wentzville.

hilarious

St. Louis outpaces Kansas City for venture capital dollars

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/blog ... 1446136081

Curious what insights can be taken from Biz Journals lead article on St. Louis tech talent shortage. I don't have paid subscription so at the mercy of others kindness. Also, still expecting a couple of nice announcements coming out of CORTEX. Any insight if those are still on track for mid November.

http://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/prin ... rtage.html

I think our national image hurts us which is why we need immigrants.

A few snipits..

"tech talent is at a premium not only here but nationwide."

Generation lost
"Ambrosius estimates St. Louis loses 25 percent of local college graduates to more high-profile locales such as the east and west coasts or tech hot-beds like Denver and Austin, Texas."
"St. Louis won’t solve its talent shortage without growing and retaining its own local graduates."
"St. Louis essentially lost a generation of talent following the dot-com bubble bust, when little money was being invested in technology companies locally. “It burned a bunch of old money people, and it was dead in St. Louis for five years,” he said. “We stopped retaining talent, and millennials didn’t come back because there wasn’t anything cool to work on. That’s what we lost. That’s what we’re trying to get back.”

Closing the Gap
Launch Code, WashU, Claim Academy, Arch Grants. Lazano
"They’re attracting people from all around the world for a very little amount of money and kickstarting their businesses,”

Destination: St. Louis
"St. Louis’ strong university presence can’t be overlooked. Our university base is huge,” Hall said. “We often forget because we live here how many great universities we have.”

"it’s important for all St. Louis leaders to be invested in the success of universities in and around St. Louis."

“If (Missouri S&T) doesn’t have the reputation it does or if local St. Louis universities don’t have the reputation they have, Square and KPMG don’t stay here,” he said. “That reputation is spurred by our universities, and if they begin to fail, you’ll see less and less tech companies moving here.”

Thanks Moorlander,

Like most articles such as the tech shortage or heck, the airline pilot crunch, I have a tendency to think that a lot of numbers are inflated for the media's sake. But you also have to believe that the region is on an upward tech trajectory when you start discussing in terms of labor/work force shortage rather then in terms of news stories such as re-training automotive workers when the auto industry imploded as example.

Market will get employees if employers want to be here which I think will be different for St. Louis and the strengths it can relate too versus Bay Area or even Austin. Will it be a cheaper business climate, will its central time zone and location as well as infrastructure for back office work be of a benefit? yes. Will it have the Oceans, Mountains and Weather? No. Is it putting together some unique answers to solving the issue and building some vibrant neighborhood to support its strong university system? Yes, I think Launchcode is huge in that regard and opening Northside Mentor center.

The piece of the puzzle I think is missing is a strong, stand alone tech program through St. Louis Community College. Heck, not sure if they even have a good advance manufacturing program, Love to see a new vertical campus downtown or on Laclede's Landing with good the metrolink/transit access. Maybe I'm missing some strong programs already within the community college system but haven't heard a whole lot about it.