Another out-of-town tech company is opening up shop in Seattle.
This time it’s fast-growing Portland, Ore.-based online banking startup Simple, which already has 20 employees working out of a new office in Seattle’s Pioneer Square neighborhood.
Founded in 2009, Simple offers a bank account and Simple Visa Card to a customer base that grew by 86 percent last year. The 325-person company prides itself on not charging fees and offering easy-to-use web and mobile apps. It was acquired for $117 million in 2014 by banking giant BBVA.
At the Seattle office, Simple has people working in engineering, product, marketing, and other roles. Some of the employees working out of the new location include:
- Shauna Causey, a marketing veteran with experience at Nordstrom, Google, Comcast, Startup Weekend, and Decide.com, which was acquired by eBay.
- Michelle Broderick who previously led major marketing campaigns for tech titans like Yelp, Uber, Geocaching, and RealNetworks.
- Lincoln Mongillo, who spent eight years at Starbucks and was an engineer at Cranium.
- Jen Joyce, who previously led marketing for Uber’s Pacific Northwest office and oversaw launches in Seattle, Portland, and other cities.
Simple has also hired engineers in the Seattle area who worked for companies like Rhapsody, MapBox, Simply Measured, Black Pixel, and others.
Simple is led by CEO Josh Reich, who moved the company from New York City to Portland in 2011. The company has a remote-friendly culture and employs people working from California, Missouri, Oklahoma, New York, Washington D.C., Tennessee, and Nebraska. Its employee base has grown by 300 percent in the past three years. Simple plans to expand its Portland office next spring.
Simple is just the latest out-of-town company to set up shop in the Seattle region, where tech talent is plentiful. There are now nearly 100 remote offices, according to GeekWire’s running list of engineering centers. Google, Facebook, Apple, Salesforce, Uber, and many others have sizable offices in the area.
