Banking on Portland: BankSimple consolidates its offices in the Rose City

It wasn’t so long ago that Alex Payne moved to Portland. And co-founded a new startup that wasn’t anywhere near Portland. That startup was BankSimple.

As time went on, Alex helped the BankSimple office in Portland grow, made some interesting local hires, and continued to work as the company landed more funding for its cause—reinventing the consumer experience with banks.

Well, now it turns out that the Portland office will be growing some more. Into a corporate headquarters. You see, BankSimple has decided to simplify their three office setup—New York, San Francisco, and Portland—by consolidating their headquarters right here in Portland, Oregon.

Why the move? For BankSimple, it came down to Portland being, well, Portland. As Adam Erlebacher, BankSimple’s Vice President of Marketing, put it:

The rationale for our move is straightforward. At the core of BankSimple is customer experience and we were looking for a city where the people share our optimism and values. Portland offers a solid talent pool for our development and customer relations teams, a great quality of life, and inexpensive access to space as we scale our operations. We’re excited to expand our presence here and to work with the community to build something great. Our team should be all settled in by October and we look forward to keeping you updated on our progress.

In a blog post on the move, they also shared this:

New York and San Francisco share these qualities, but Portland provides the right environment for us to grow our team and solidify our culture. We’re ramping up our hiring in Portland significantly – particularly in customer relations – where there is a deep pool of talent and room to expand. In addition, we have access to a strong technical community and a growing startup culture that we are proud to be a part of. The city offers a great quality of life that has already attracted a number of our engineers to make the move from San Francisco, well before we decided to double down on Portland.

Needless to say, this is the kind of thinking that gives Portland—and its startup scene—a huge boost of credibility. It will be nice to see what keeps this momentum going.

[UPDATE]

Portland Mayor Sam Adams took a few moments to chat with BankSimple about the move to Portland.

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For more on the move, see Mike Rogoway’s piece on BankSimple and the Portland startup scene. For more on the company, visit BankSimple.

Published by Rick Turoczy

More than mildly obsessed with the Portland startup community. Founder and editor at Silicon Florist. Cofounder and general manager at PIE. Follow me on Twitter: @turoczy View all posts by Rick Turoczy