It was the first major domino to fall — and on Aug. 29 it became official.
That’s when MyXR Inc., an augmented reality and engagement software company, cut the ribbon on its new regional headquarters, which will take up approximately 1,200 square feet at Western Kentucky University Innovation Campus in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Among those in attendance was Kentucky Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman, along with other state officials.
“Kentucky’s economy is booming because of companies like MyXR investing and believing in what the commonwealth and our people have to offer,” said Coleman in a release. “I am thrilled to welcome MyXR to Team Kentucky and the Bowling Green area.”
When all is settled, the office should create somewhere in the vicinity of 60 full-time jobs, as announced in a press release in April. The company currently has approximately 40 employees.
“For our team, our prospects and our shareholders, selecting the WKU Innovation Campus and the state of Kentucky was an easy decision after a long review process,” said MyXR Inc. Chairman and CEO Hans Koch in a release. “The Kentucky public and private communities have given us both a welcome mat and a playbook for growing our business, delivering better service and software and an opportunity to create a world-class corporate hub for our company. We can’t wait to get started in Kentucky. We’re grateful to Gov. [Andy] Beshear, the city of Bowling Green and everyone at the WKU Innovation Campus.”
I spoke with Koch on a phone call in July when I was in Bowling Green for a cover story that will be coming out tomorrow (Sept. 1) in Louisville Business First's print edition about the tech explosion — and overall surge in all things — that the county seat of Warren County has been experiencing.
“We create gamification software that rewards people for their time and the effort that they use,” said Koch, when explaining to me how his company works.
At the time, Koch was preparing for the second iteration of his company’s gamification platform, MyXR Engage 3, which has been designed to be easily more scalable than its predecessors.
Koch told me as well that his company was about to close on $1.5 million of a pre-Series A round after having raised around $2 million in its first seven years. The company’s origins have been in San Francisco (where Koch lives), but has office locations in many different locations — he spoke with me from Honolulu, for instance.
When it came to finding a regional headquarters in the eastern part of the country, Koch and his team conducted an extensive search that included much larger cities, such as Charlotte, North Carolina; Austin, Texas; and Detroit.
Koch said the deciding factor was not Bowling Green’s proximity to Nashville, Tennessee, but the town’s people, saying that Music City only was 15% of the equation.
“Applied artificial intelligence and extended reality technologies are helping shape our professional, personal, family and civic lives,” said WKU Innovation Campus CEO Buddy Steen, in a release. “We want to attract and retain companies who focus on creating immersive experiences that combine new technologies with strong transmedia storytelling and that are committed to improving all facets of our lives. We are excited to have MyXR Inc. as part of that focus.”
After the MyXR announcement, several other tech firms have signed up to have office inside the WKU Innovation Campus, as part of an effort to not only retain the companies that are borne inside of the facility, but also to attract others to follow suit by working in concert with the Bowling Green Chamber of Commerce.
In the recent months, Lunae, an intellectual property (IP)-focused startup, and beingAI, an AI startup working on the world’s first transmedia AI beings, have announced their intentions to move to the campus.
