EAST LANSING, Mich. — TechSmith broke ground Tuesday on a new $15 million headquarters in Spartan Village on Michigan State University's campus.
Wendy Hamilton, president, and CEO of the computer software and services company, said they chose MSU as the location for the new headquarters because of the close relationship they have with the university.
“We’re a growing company," Hamilton said. "We’re in a war for talent especially tech talent. MSU is top 100 globally in computer science and we want to hire a lot more and we want our recruiting brand here.”
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer spoke at the groundbreaking and said the project was helping to lay the path for economic growth and recovery in the state.
“Last year Michigan ranked 11th in the nation for net tech employment," Whitmer said. "We have over 80,000 workers employed in technology clustered industries. It’s also why Business Facilities magazine recognized Michigan in the top ten states in the nation for tech job growth.”
Whitmer said the technology workforce will only continue to grow.
“Our tech workforce continues to grow and we offer a critical advantage as we work to grow our tech industry right here in the state," Whitmer said. "In times of crisis, we need to put our foot on the gas and that’s what this is about.”
Hamilton said the pandemic taught the company a lot.
“We learned in the last year we can work remote quite well," Hamilton said. "A lot of our customers are using us because our teaching remote or working remote and we are a remote-friendly organization and we did decide to be remote flexible.”
Which influenced the way they designed the $15 million headquarters.
“You need face-to-face relationships, face-to-face collaboration, you need the best environment for inspiration," Hamilton said. "So, we did actually change the environment to focus on fewer individual work-spaces and more collaborative spaces to really make it how it would be used in a hybrid type workforce.”
The company employs about 300 people.
MSU President Samuel Stanley said he's excited to bring this opportunity to students and graduates.
“Bringing together this high tech firm and our College of Engineering with the computer sciences, the great strength we have in communications and that’s important to technology, game development and so on, we really envision a tech park here in the future and this is the critical first step,” Stanley said.
Hamilton said the project is expected to take a year to completes and should be done by late June of 2022.
