A St. Petersburg insurance technology startup saw so much growth during the Covid-19 pandemic that it needs a bigger office space.
CaseGlide, which initially shared an office with fellow St. Pete company The Penny Hoarder in the SunTrust Building, has moved into a larger space in Synovus Bank Building while remaining in downtown St. Pete.
“This is the best place to live in Florida and, as you’ve seen from the migration, Florida is the best place to live in the country,” Wesley Todd, CEO of CaseGlide, said in an interview with the Tampa Bay Business Journal.
Investing in a larger office space is still a bit of a risk for companies as the coronavirus pandemic continues, leaving many workers remote. However, several Tampa Bay businesses have made a move to larger, more expensive spaces in the last six months. Cybersecurity firm ReliaQuest signed a 120,000-square-foot lease on Water Street this summer, and software giant ConnectWise will move to downtown Tampa starting early 2022.
Todd said in CaseGlide’s case, roughly half of his more than 30 employees are coming to the office, leaving the ability to distance as needed. He’s also invested in new technology with the space, namely pointing to Owl Technology, a 360-degree smart videoconferencing camera.
“[As some head back to the office] now the worry becomes, ‘Do the remote people get left out if they can’t or don’t come into the office?’” Todd said. “There are so many valid reasons not to come in, but they have to feel like they’re here. The tech allows us to get in the conference room, and we’re all looking at each other and talking and not staring at a TV monitor or computer. And we’re excited about where tech can be heading.”
The company itself has seen an upward trajectory, according to Todd, who began 2020 with roughly half the employees CaseGlide currently has.
“We’re basically a child of the pandemic — more people were hired in a remote environment than we ever hired before,” he said. “We were so successful in Florida, it creates a high barrier to overcome outside of Florida. But this year, we took the extra 20 people and crossed the bridge. So now we’re there, and it’s time to land, expand and explode.”
The company, which provides legal spending management software for insurers, risk management departments and third-party claims administrators, will expand into the workers’ compensation and liability sectors.
In 2019, the company received an investment for an undisclosed amount from Boston-based Arcadian Software but does not have any immediate plans for a Series B follow-up.
“We’ve been making money for seven years and done it in a different way — through results, not investments,” Todd said. “And that’s proof you can get people in this area, put them together and build a tech company that competes nationally. It shows you we have winners here, and it can be done.”
