The recruitment blitz by eBusiness Technologies – which is using Route 95 billboards and radio spots in its current quest to fill more than 50 new jobs – is the latest sign of astonishing new growth among the state’s high technology companies, especially in Providence. “It’s starting to get hot,” said Kip Bergstrom, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Policy Council – and, not to mix metaphors, “I would guess what we’re seeing is the first wave of what will become an avalanche.”
“The atmosphere is really tremendous,” agreed Joe Hammang, director of the science and technology group of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation. Every week, it seems, there’s another high tech company expanding, and more venture capital deals have been announced since January “than any other period of time I can think of.”
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Garrett Hunter, president of the Business Development Company of Rhode Island, a non-bank state-regulated lender that helps undercapitalized local companies expand employment, credits the current high tech wave with the arrival of venture capitalists – specifically Rex Capital of Warwick, and Zero Stage Capitol, which set up a Providence office in the Foundry building in September 1998.
Zero Stage, which recently raised nearly $14 million for high technology companies in three separate deals, has done more for the state than bring money – it’s psychological, Hunter said. It’s a presence that “has begun to make other venture capital” firms take a more serious look at Rhode Island, and helped dispel a longstanding image of the state as being stuck in time.
“I feel very positive about the whole thing,” Hunter said, and “it’s going to continue.”
Mark Thaller, general partner of Zero Stage Capital, calls the current mood a “new proactivity,” even though financial and quality of life incentives that make the state conducive to high tech were in place before the present boom. But then, “people like me didn’t have offices in Rhode Island,” he said. “The money’s still green, but there’s just a much broader net, now.”
The mood is palpable, Bergstrom said. “You can feel it in the streets.” And ironically, Hammang said, the “big problem” for information and technology companies is “lack of inventory [when it] comes to housing.”
Most information technology companies believe the place to be is Providence, Hammang said, not just for urban amenities but for the “cache, that feeling.”
“Providence is kind of a natural choice,” Bergstrom agreed, even though there are also great options at Quonset Point and on Aquidneck Island. “It’s [Providence] the right sort of physical environment,” with an active street life, artists and restaurants.
Hammang said the jewelry district, roughly quartered by Point and Weybosset streets, is the perfect setting for these growing high tech companies, but “the space isn’t ready,” while companies of the high tech persuasion are “used to moving very quickly.”
With no specific rehabilitation projects lined up for downtown, “companies just don’t have a clear idea of where they would go,” Hammang said, hastening to add that even though “it would be easier if you had something just turnkey,” the present lack of space won’t last long enough “to dampen enthusiasm for Rhode Island.”
“Providence has never looked better. There’s a lot of wonderful buildings, in and around downtown,” Hammang said. “It will happen.”
Bergstrom said there are “lots of bits and pieces of places in the jewelry district,” that could be renovated, and there is also space for new construction of “smaller scale, mid-rise structures.” Since the district is an enterprise zone, financial incentives are already in place. There would also be no problem filling new space with high tech operations seeking the “Renaissance city product” that used to be available in Cambridge and Boston’s Back Bay, areas now already full and charging twice the Providence rent of $20 to $25 a square foot.
Of course, Bergstrom said, with growth, some tenants eventually will be priced out. “The Jewelry District will succeed so well over time” that the folks who helped make it that way “will be the pioneers in Promenade,” pushing some of “the sizzle and funkiness” in another direction that needs it, “and that’s good.”
Rick Kovar, executive director of the RI Technology Council, credits the Mass Exodus campaign with drawing a “lot of interest in the state,” including from companies interested in setting up “incubation space” for IT start-ups, which need to be “wired for sound.” At least two or three companies are scoping the downtown area right now, “with the intent of purchase,” Kovar said, and since like attracts like, it will soon become “easier to attract more companies.”
Although there’s more work to do, “it appears to me we have a growing and vibrant IT industry in this state,” Kovar said., “I’m very optimistic about the future,” a future where folks will no longer have to leave Rhode Island for work.
“There’s lots of jobs here for them, and there will be in the future,” Hammang agreed – which brings a new high tech problem, both in Rhode Island and nationally, which is finding enough workers.
Kovar “conservatively” estimates that high tech now creates about 2,000 additional jobs per year in Rhode Island “that we cannot fill.”
Although state colleges and universities produce about 16,000 graduates a year, only about 400, Kovar said, graduate in computer science. One problem is the perception of high tech jobs as “sitting in a cubicle eight hours a day,” rather than the exciting, “no collar” jobs they really are.
eBusiness, which has grown “100 percent quarter over quarter” since April, 1999, is seeking everything from technical support representatives to consultants, systems engineers, sales and marketing and accounting and human resources, said Director of Marketing Lisa-Jean Boulet.
While the eBusiness operation is apparently growing, Inso Corp. – parent of eBusiness — has been in the midst of restructuring over the past year. Inso Corp. has sold a number of its divisions throughout the country while consolidating its corporate offices in Boston to Providence.
“It’s across the board,” Boulet said, and their recruitment campaign, especially the billboards, is geared to attracting fed-up Massachusetts commuters. “I just know this area is starting to thrive again, and it’s definitely been recent,” said Boulet, who has personal experience to back her up. “128 is a nightmare!”
After graduating from Johnson & Wales in the 1980s, then working five years in downtown Providence for the software company Cadre (since merged and gone to Boston), Boulet spent the next eight years, before joining eBusiness, commuting from her home in Lincoln to downtown Boston, Cambridge or the Marlboro/Westboro area.
“I could not find a technical position within the state,” she said, a dilemma that finally prompted her to buy a home in Sutton, Mass last summer – right before she got the job at eBusiness.
Oh well, Boulet said, laughing, “at least the reverse commute is nice.”
