BlueCrew is determined to grow with HQ move from San Francisco to Chicago

Out of all the places in the U.S. to launch and nurture a startup, San Francisco's Bay Area is a notoriously difficult place to do it. The area is filled with extreme competition, whether it's hiring the best talent, finding the best investors, or even establishing offices.

Despite the challenging conditions, BlueCrew thrived in San Francisco. The on-demand staffing platform for hourly workers, founded by two Stanford graduate students in 2014, was admitted to Y Combinator’s 2015 summer cohort. While some startups lose momentum after YC, BlueCrew continued to gain steam and grow at a rapid clip. By the end of 2018, BlueCrew had raised $17.3 million in funding and developed its headcount to over 100 people.

As you might expect, BlueCrew has aggressive growth goals for 2019. What might surprise you, however, is that the company decided to move its headquarters from San Francisco to the Merchandise Mart in order to hit them.

“We were looking at our medium-term and long-term growth goals, and we weren’t confident that we could hit those entirely in San Francisco,” said Co-founder and CTO Gino Rooney. “Chicago — which has an awesome tech pipeline and is just a great city — seemed like a good match for this next growth phase.”

BlueCrew’s next growth phase will see headcount increase drastically as the company beefs up its tech, operations, product and sales teams. Rooney said the company will make around 50 hires this year, and will add between 50 and 100 new team members in 2020.

Read more here.

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