Atlanta, like many of the other 19 cities still in the running for Amazon’s second headquarters, is experiencing a “halo effect,” an attraction from other businesses due to the hype surrounding the Seattle shipping giant’s interest.
In the last few months, Atlanta Business Chronicle has announced more than half a dozen companies opening Eastern headquarters or relocating their entire companies to the area. Several companies cite the city’s infrastructure, airport, tech talent and culture as driving factors behind their moves, but have said the possibility of an Amazon headquarters has created a special kind of buzz for the local tech community.
San Francisco-based New Relic, a software analytics firm that helps businesses monitor application and infrastructure performance, selected Atlanta for its East Coast headquarters in March. According to the company’s chief people officer, Kristy Friedrichs, the move to Atlanta was driven by a large number of customers and partners in the East.
“Recently, it became clear that our business was ready for a formal East Coast presence and Atlanta stood out as the clear choice for this office,” she said, citing “the city’s top-tier, diverse talent pool, the growing technology scene and its convenient location as an easy travel hub for team members and customers.”
Innovation inspires more innovation, Friedrichs said, and the prospect of Amazon’s second headquarters in the South has shed additional light on the city’s offerings.
“It feels like an exciting time to be in Atlanta for businesses that are looking to compete, grow and thrive,” she added.
Vero Biotech, a biopharma company based in Florida, announced its relocation to Atlanta days following New Relic’s announcement. Its staff moved to the city because of its growing businesses, rich environment and access to talent, said Namita Khanna, executive director of strategic development. When speaking with other companies prior to Vero Biotech’s move, she said leaders at the firm constantly heard about the revitalization of Atlanta and the culture it provides to employees.
Despite Amazon being in a different industry, the prospect of having companies of that size and caliber join Atlanta’s portfolio is exciting, Khanna said. “There’s a very young, millennial-type feel to Atlanta,” she added, “and when you hear about Amazon or these big companies relocating, it just energizes the whole environment and it spreads across the other industries.”
Not only has Atlanta garnered the spotlight from one of the biggest tech giants in the country, but the area has the right amenities, infrastructure, diversity, transportation, cost of living and culture that many tech companies are looking for, according to Brian Beckham, CEO and president of Brainjocks, which relocated from Kennesaw. Ga., to Milton, Ga., in April.
Atlanta being a potential site for Amazon’s HQ2 has created both buzz and fear, he added. “For companies like ours, we know that it’s going to make the market much more competitive to retain the people that we have,” he said, “and it’s going to make it more competitive to recruit engineers.”
The anticipation behind Amazon’s announcement is similar to when the city of Atlanta was named host of the 1995 Summer Olympic Games, said Cederick Johnson, director of industry marketing and communications for PDI, a software solutions provider for retail and wholesale petroleum industries. The company recently opened a global headquarters in Alpharetta.
“Anytime something major like that happens, it really puts the city on the map in a big way,” he said. “When you have a behemoth of a company like Amazon looking at the city… that’s a pretty big endorsement to the businesses here because the city is doing the right stuff.”
While several new companies cite this halo effect, CEO of the Metro Atlanta Chamber Hala Moddelmog said Amazon’s buzz is just one example of the progress the city has been making for years in recruiting companies. For five years in a row, a national corporate real estate and economic development trade magazine has named Georgia the best state for business in the country. Global tech companies such as Pandora, NCR Corp. and GE Digital have selected Atlanta as their home for digital hubs, or facilities to run Internet of Things (IOT), she added.
“These choices that have been made over the last three years or so have given us enormous credibility with other tech companies that want to come here,” Moddelmog said. “They know these people wouldn’t come if we didn’t have the talent. They wouldn’t come if we didn’t have the business climate.”
The city’s higher-education talent pool, economic development group, collaborative business community, supportive local government, diversity and culture are part of the business momentum in Atlanta, Moddelmog said.
“I don’t know if people are moving here because of Amazon or the halo effect,” she said. “But it certainly, being in that top 20 list, and getting the amount of publicity that we’ve gotten…I certainly think that has been a positive for us. It’s allowed us to tell our story on a lot of broad stages.”
