Henry Schuck is the co-founder and CEO of DiscoverOrg, a Vancouver-based technology and research company providing sales and marketing intelligence solutions and other services to 1,500 clients. It has profiles of 20,000 companies in the U.S., Canada, and the European Union.
It’s 4:30 p.m. on a Friday, and I’m conducting my last interview of the day, with an Intel employee interested in being a server engineer for our fast-growing technology company. We start talking about why he’s interested in the position, what the job would entail and what he currently does at Intel. The job applicant pauses as he begins answering, glancing out the window. “Sorry”, he says, realizing that he’s just lost his focus. “This view it’s just, it’s really distracting”.
On a clear day on the 9th floor of DiscoverOrg’s new headquarters in the 805 Broadway Building, our open floor plan gives me views in every direction. The Columbia River glistens, Mt. Hood is majestic in the distance while Mt. Adams and Mount St. Helens punctuate the skyline to the north.
There is a buzz of energy inside and out our office; our employees are excited about being downtown and being under one roof, after spending more than a year scattered among several office locations east of Vancouver. Now that we are all here, and enjoying everything the city has to offer — coffee shops, great lunch options, fun bars for a drink after work, shops and parks — I find myself thinking: “What’s not to like about working in downtown Vancouver?”
Our information research company, DiscoverOrg, relocated to the Pacific Northwest in the summer of 2009 because our co-founder Kirk Brown grew up here. Still very much a startup at that time (we had three employees — including Kirk and myself), we had no choice but to maximize our limited assets. Vancouver appealed to us because Washington’s tax structure was more favorable to our business than Oregon’s. You see, we had no outside funding, no favorable loans, no venture capital. The company was completely boot-strapped, funded solely by the two of us, largely through credit card debt.
We settled in on East Fourth Plain Boulevard, just north of Clark College. We were across the street from a U-Haul rental office and next door to a Muchas Gracias fast-food restaurant. Transients wandered through our offices daily — it got so bad that we had to keep the doors locked during business hours.
But such is life for a boot-strapped startup, and we loved it. We’d work out at Crossfit Epiphany after work, eat at every hole-in-the-wall restaurant down Fourth Plain (there are a ton of great places — Thai Little Home, Pho Da Lat, Anoush Deli). Vancouver started to feel like home.
Since moving here, Kirk and I both built homes in Clark County, got engaged and married to our wives. Kirk had a son and has another one coming. More than anything, we planned the rest of our lives here.
In just under six years, we have grown from three employees to 150, and we are on track to add another 150 over the next six months. During these years of rapid growth, we on many occasions considered going across the river to Portland or north to Seattle, but for a variety of reasons have decided to stay. As I look out the window past the river to the Portland skyline and the hills of Forest Park, I am glad we did.
Attracting talent
Once we decided to stay in Clark County, we looked at our choices for space that could accommodate our expected growth. Our ability to recruit new talent was a significant consideration in moving downtown. We have always benefitted from our proximity to Portland, but our new location is even more attractive to the qualified professionals we need to grow our team.
Now we are easily accessible from I-5 and are only about 15 minutes from most parts of Portland. We have also had luck recruiting talent from Seattle, the Bay Area, Denver and Utah. For those who want to live in Portland, the commute is vastly preferable to the commutes from Tualatin and Beaverton in Oregon, or Vancouver to downtown Portland. For those who want to live on the Washington side of the river, there is a significant increase in take-home pay due to the lack of a Washington state income tax. In fact, my wife and I are currently building a new home just a few miles from the office.
Downtown allure
Almost every day since the move to our new space, I have overheard someone remark on how great it is to be surrounded by all of the bars and restaurant options we have here. Among those who have not spent much time downtown, I don’t think Vancouver gets the credit it deserves for the number and quality of places to eat and drink.
At a board meeting last month, one of our board members who lives in New York City commented that the Reuben he got from Low Bar was the best he’d ever eaten. My wife gets giddy when we grab lunch at City Sandwich Company or dinner at Thai Orchid. Our staff loves grabbing a drink after work on a sunny day at Brickhouse or Jorge’s Tequila Factory. On a sunny day, when I get restless, I’ll take a walk down to Starbucks with our company’s general counsel for a quick coffee. Sometimes I don’t even want coffee —we have a commercial grade espresso maker in our break room — I just want to walk outside in an incredibly walkable neighborhood, past shops and restaurants and parks.
In addition to placing us closer to Portland, we had really hoped the move downtown would help with team bonding. We wanted our employees to walk together during lunch breaks or stay downtown after work to grab a drink, watch a game or go to a movie. That type of employee interaction is great for company culture and for building a strong team. Our plan is working, even before the arrival of our first summer downtown.
Big fish, small-ish pond
Throughout our decision-making process on our office move, and continuing today, we have had great support and encouragement from Vancouver’s business and economic development community. We are still a growing company, and it is nice to feel that our presence here is making a real impact on the city. As part of Vancouver’s growing technology sector, we feel not only like a big fish in a small pond, but also that we are getting in on the ground floor of something that is ready to take off. We are all excited, for example, about the new waterfront development and other projects coming down the pike.
Our lease at 805 Broadway is significantly less expensive than anything comparable in Portland — even the suburbs of Portland. And our space is awesome, with a state-of-the-art buildout, great building facilities and those fantastic views in all directions.
And have I mentioned the tax advantages? Don’t get me wrong, we pay our share of taxes. But when choosing between Portland and Vancouver, I would rather take the money I would pay in additional taxes to be located in Portland, reinvest it in the company and continue to create good jobs.
