The rise of emerging companies moving their headquarters or opening a second office in smaller cities is actually not surprising when looking at socioeconomic trends: higher rents and cost of talent on the coasts, the trend toward flexible and remote work, and a better distribution of capital across the country.
But here’s the thing: while it might benefit a new company to relocate from San Francisco to St. Louis in the long-run — it’s actually pretty hard.
“Typically, a company at an early stage simply does not have an internal function in workplace operations or real estate. There is no one that is tasked with the high-level strategy and expansion work that comes with opening a second office,” says Devorah Rosner, the Head of Operations at BeyondHQ.
That’s where BeyondHQ will come in. A Bay area-based startup itself, BeyondHQ is a tech-enabled platform and services company that helps tech companies open second or third offices.
It works in three parts. First, a location strategy. Rosner shares that the company is building an algorithm-based tool that will “help companies determine, based on their key parameters, where the best places are to go for their second HQ.”
“Whether its proximity, cost of talent, cost of living, proximity to work — things that are unique to each company will go into this equation.”
From Anchorage to Albany, the company can select its new home. Then, BeyondHQ helps them address the second critical component: talent. Rosner says the recruiters who excel in Tier 1 tech markets often do not accurately assess candidates in other parts of the country.
“The recruiting teams in Tier 1 markets look at the resumes of locally-based candidates, and that tends to be the lens through which they look through every candidate. But if you were to talk to a candidate in, say, Des Moines, who’s worked in John Deere’s innovation center, a Bay Area talent sourcer may not have the lens to understand that kind of work.”
BeyondHQ is building a network of talent partners across the country to help their clients form a successful team in their new city.
All these new team members need an actual space to work, and that’s where BeyondHQ’s third pillar comes in: real estate relocation. They partner with co-working spaces and brokerages to begin the search process, and then remain on as partners from “lease to launch,” says Rosner.
“This goes all the way to figuring out who your office supply and food and beverage vendors should be,” says Rosner.
She joined BeyondHQ earlier this year, less than one year after the company was founded by Madhu Chamarty, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur. BeyondHQ raised seed money in its early days from investors including Costanoa Ventures and Bloomberg Beta.
Rosner recently re-located herself to Atlanta, becoming the very use case that her new company addresses.
“I am now living our mission — to help companies expand outside of the coasts to increase the opportunities for knowledge-based jobs,” she says. “So the idea of having a BeyondHQ office stationed in one of the markets that we champion made sense.”