I sat down with Stephanie Wargo of BitPay to let us know what’s been shaking since their $30 million raise in May (which was the largest-ever financing round for a bitcoin company.)
The Details:
- They are taking over the whole 2nd floor of 3405 Piedmont Road (photo above) with now 70+ employees in their ATL office. Growth has been so fast that “every Monday is a new face.”
- Locations in Atlanta, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Argentina & San Francisco. They are waiting 6 to 12 months until considering the addition of another city.
- Beefing up in Amsterdam and also in San Fran, where they just hired a new head of sales.
- BitPay is experiencing their fastest growth in Europe. Their number of European merchants has doubled since adding in additional team members. There’s not a whole lot of competition in Europe which is why “traction there has been so fluid.”
- They have two full time folks in Tampa who are onboarding local merchants to accept Bitcoin for the Bitcoin St. Petersburg Bowl Game. BitPay is the main sponsor of the game in what Executive Chairman, Tony Gallippi says is an “to move bitcoin into the mainstream.”
- Hiring for developers (interested? click here & scroll down)
Why have they built and decided to grow from ATL?
- There is a strong payment processing hub here (85 billion transactions in 2013—around 70 percent of the total number nationwide)
- Georgia Tech is so close, which makes it easier to recruit developer and tech talent
- Their Co-Founder & CEO, Stephen Pair is from here and has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from Georgia Tech.
