Andy Lowery could have picked a number of cities when deciding where to relocate his tech startup, RealWear, from the Silicon Valley.
Lowery's choice surprised even some in the company. But the former artillery barracks at Fort Vancouver spoke to him.
Since the move in 2017, RealWear has blossomed. The company, which manufactures head-mounted computer displays for industrial users, has grown from eight employees to 134 today as it has built a client base including BMW, Shell, and China's electric utility – the largest utility in the world. RealWear has now raised over $100 million in funding.
"We were red carpeted into Vancouver," Lowery, the CEO and co-founder of RealWear, recalls of the company's arrival. "After we came is when we really started to say, 'Whoa, we made a good choice.'"
Decades after SEH America relocated from San Jose to begin manufacturing silicon wafers in Vancouver, the past several years has seen a new wave of savvy startups like RealWear joining legacy companies on the north side of the river.
More than 5,800 Clark County workers were employed in tech industries like electronics manufacturing, computer systems and software design last year, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a 40-percent increase in headcount since the start of the decade.
And there has been an astonishing amount of startup activity over that time. Roughly 620 tech firms called the county home by the end of 2018, a figure that has more than doubled since the depths of the Great Recession.
"The momentum is certainly palpable," said Jennifer Baker, president of the Columbia River Economic Development Council. "It's really spread across our top five sectors of growth in Clark County in one way or another, from clean tech to life sciences, and metals and machinery, where we're seeing automation, augmented reality, and in the case of robot automation, some forms of AI. Those are areas where local companies are adopting technologies and innovating processes that are enabling strong
growth for the region."
This newer generation of Vancouver tech heavyweights includes nLight. The laser manufacturer has blossomed into one of the Silicon Forest's true giants, with more than 1,000 employees and manufacturing facilities in China and Finland. nLight has been so successful that the company went public last year to attract new investment.
ZoomInfo, formerly DiscoverOrg, may not be far behind. Founded in 2007, the Vancouver marketing and sales intelligence platform has been on an acquisition streak, highlighted by its purchase of top competitor ZoomInfo this year.
That acquisition roughly doubled its employee count from 500 to 1,000, ZoomInfo Human Resources Director Brett Kindschuh said.
"Our growth has definitely been organic as well," Kindschuh said. "We have a pretty good talent pool both in Portland and Vancouver. And people that live on the Washington side are finding it's a very attractive place to work."
Embracing its role as the metro area's second city has long played to Vancouver's advantage, said Max Ault, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Strategic Partnerships at Washington State University Vancouver. The cities' connection in tech goes back to the industry's first wave in the region, with major silicon wafer manufacturers setting up on both sides of the river in the 1970s and 80s. And it continues today.
"There has been a concerted effort to really align the growth in Vancouver with the broader part of the Portland-Vancouver metro community, taking some of that energy clustered in the Pacific Northwest that's really centered around tech innovation," Ault said. "That has matured in a way that's still very surprising for all of us, which is as the high-tech industry changed across the world, we've shifted toward software and IoT (internet of things). Our software community has been able to adapt fairly quick."
"There has been a concerted effort to really align the growth in Vancouver with the broader part of the Portland-Vancouver metro community, taking some of that energy clustered in the Pacific Northwest that's really centered around tech innovation," Ault said.
Techlandia 28