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St. Louis Sees Significant Growth in the Regional Tech Scene

  • October 07, 2015

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Square, Pandora and Uber are among the latest tech companies to call St. Louis home.

For the past few years, Missouri has seen significant growth in its tech scene. With statewide growth, increased investments, new data center incentives, a young and vibrant culture across the state, and the growing list of recent announcements, something is happening in the Show Me state, and St. Louis is a significant hub for tech growth.

Square, the brainchild of Jim McKelvey and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey, just set up shop in the Cortex Innovation Community right next door to IKEA. Surrounded by more than 200 tech and innovation companies, including the Y Combinator company Cofactor Genomics, Square has plans to hire 200 skilled workers.

Agtech company Forrest Innovations, headquartered in Israel, opened their US HQ in the St. Louis region, following in the footsteps of two other Israeli agtech companies, Kaiima and Evogene.

And now Pandora has loaded up the truck and moved to CIC. CIC St. Louis that is. Innovation. High tech. Cue the theme music.

“I think it’s a really big deal,” said Dougan Sherwood, managing director of CIC St. Louis, in a phone interview Monday with KMOX Radio. “It’s very validating.”

In another interview, Sherwood told St. Louis Public Radio that officials with Pandora, which is based in Oakland, Calif., wanted to replicate the culture they have at their headquarters.

“So when you come to a place like CIC, which has intentionally developed a culture of entrepreneurship, and startup activity and technology, I think the folks there [at Pandora] felt like they were at home,” he said.

But wait, there’s more! According to news reports, Uber is setting up shop in CIC St. Louis as well. No announcement has yet been made, but “it’s great to see what we seem to be headed in the right direction,” Sherwood told KMOX.

And lastly, since there is news currently circulating around the internet on how much it costs to live near the San Francisco region headquarters of Square, Pandora and Uber, we thought we’d mention that the newest Square, Pandora and Uber locations cost much less than San Francisco. In fact, San Francisco’s cost of living is more than 300% higher than St. Louis.

How’s that for growing your profit? Enjoy the show!