Carbon Black says talent drove decision to choose Boulder

BOULDER — As Carbon Black Inc. (Nasdaq: CBLK) announced internally that it was opening an office in Boulder and would relocate some employees from its Boston headquarters to the new location, Chief People Officer Amy Robinson said there was a deluge of requests from employees to be considered for the move.

“We had a list of people interested in moving out there,” Robinson told BizWest after the company’s official announcement. “Once we made the commitment and saw our internal folks’ appetite and enthusiasm for going, it gave us great confidence.”

Monday marked the first day of move-in for Carbon Black, a cybersecurity firm, into its new offices at 1433 Pearl St., but already Robinson said the company is looking to double down.

“Our office can house 150 people,” she said. “We have 84 people so far and have a pipeline to get us at around 120 employees by the end of the year. But we’re working with our landlord to secure another floor in our building. All signs indicate it’s a go, because there’s more talent and more demand in this market than we even originally envisioned.”

Talent was a major driver for the company, whose goal is to help customers around the world defend themselves against cybersecurity threats. Carbon Black was looking to move out west — looking at Seattle, Portland, Austin and Denver — before settling on Boulder.

“It’s a location that has a highly educated, skilled and talented workforce, increasingly so,” Robinson said. “In addition to larger anchor companies there like Microsoft and Google, we were surprised and impressed to see the number of startups invested in and growing in the region. For us, that’s a real telling sign around the business community’s commitment to investing in the market. Everytime I see a lot of startups, I think of innovation and quality of talent.”

In addition to a talent pool, Carbon Black saw other benefits to Boulder. It would establish its goal of having a sales team near its west coast customers. It had senior talent there: Chief Product Officer Ryan Polk was previously at Rally Software. Boulder also has a culture that Carbon Black saw as ideal.

“It was so clear to us Boulder was an awesome place to live and work,” Robinson said.

In addition to West Coast sales, the Boulder office will also be focused on dev ops and threat intelligence, Robinson said. The company also plans to hire several engineers for the office.

“We are pedal to the metal in terms of growth,” she said. “We want to maximize our opportunity is locations where we are hiring talent to grow. And we are working with our Boulder landlord to expand our footprint in our current space, which is a great indication of our commitment to this office and location.”

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