By: Anderson Schoenrock
Last month, I had an opportunity to share the story of how my company, Memory Ventures, relocated to Fishers. While our story is unique, we are far from the only high-tech company to decide Fishers is the right place to call home. I firmly believe what is happening in Fishers is incredibly unique and will benefit the community for years to come. I think it is important that the residents of Fishers have an opportunity to learn more about what is happening with entrepreneurs in our community and they have given me the opportunity to guest blog each month to share unique stories of entrepreneurs in our community.
A recent addition to Fishers’ burgeoning smart, vibrant and entrepreneurial city is a company called CloudOne that moved into new space on the third floor of The Switch building in the Nickel Plate District last month. CloudOne is a true success story and was recently selected as one of the Top 100 Global firms by Red Herring. The lobby of their new space includes a “trophy” case that showcases the numerous other awards they have won, which is far too long to list here.
I had the opportunity to sit down with CloudOne’s CEO John McDonald earlier this month to talk about the Company, its move to Fishers and his views on the entrepreneurial community in Fishers. Interestingly, we spent much of our time talking about John’s team and how CloudOne is utilizing Fishers as a unique recruiting tool. I was fascinated as he shared the story of a new hire they’ll be announcing in January. The recruitment of this new hire truly encapsulates why Fishers is such a unique place for employees. This new hire has not been announced, so at John’s request I have left the hire’s name out of this piece, but did want to share the story.
Prior to becoming the CEO of CloudOne, John spent a number of years in numerous roles at IBM and built multiple teams within that organization. It was during this time that John first met this latest CloudOne hire. The hire had just graduated from Purdue and joined John’s team as a tech specialist. After IBM, the hire left to take a position with a high tech startup in Silicon Valley. There this hire met his wife, who is also an engineer at a very well-known Silicon Valley tech company. Fast forward a few years, they married and now have a young child. They both built highly successful careers at big name Silicon Valley companies, but decided the challenges and sacrifices of life in Northern California are no longer worth it. The high cost of living requires both parents to work. Hours are long and stressful. With the goal of building a new life, the husband accepted a new position with CloudOne and the family has sold their Silicon Valley home.
What is most interesting about this family’s story is their motivation for accepting the position with CloudOne and moving – they view Fishers and central Indiana as a place where they can create a better life. The intersection of being able to work for a high-growth, high-tech company, such as CloudOne, while also being able to live in a community with an attractive cost of living with great schools, affordable housing, low crime and all of the other amenities of Fishers presented them with the “whole package”. As John explained, “living here gives them the opportunity to have it all, without compromises.”
CloudOne believes so strongly in Fishers it is utilizing it as a recruiting tool with existing employees as well. About half of CloudOne’s team currently resides outside of Central Indiana. The company has a standing offer to all of these employees that they will provide the incentives if they move to the headquarters location. As John told me in closing our conversation – “We just believe having more of our employees in Fishers will make us a better, stronger and more efficient company.”