Tech Firm Marks Growth With New Digs

JONESBORO

"Those jobs will draw revenue from outside the state to fund exceptional salaries and benefits for high tech workers here in our area," Shipman said. The company has grown by more than 30 percent per year since it started. Shipman called the purchase a "risk reduction strategy." The floor plan calls for maintaining the 70,000-square-feet of open space now used by Hays. "We don't really need the visibility of Highland," Shipman said. "But we need to be able to move out of that building to a larger building in the future if needed."

"One of the issues that I saw in that particular industry was that you have a lot of different regional commissary companies, and none of them could devote the money that was needed to build a technology solution," Shipman explained. That made it difficult for the smaller companies to compute with mega-firms. "That's where I started this company, was to actually get a lot of the small players together and contribute to one technology pot."

"And I've got another guy that works with us, he's got a Ph.D. in engineering," Shipman said. "He had the same exact story. He moved off and worked at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base (in Ohio) for years. But he wanted to move back home. I've got another guy that worked at IBM for years, and guess what? He wanted to move back home."

"We believe Northeast Arkansas produces people just as smart, as talented, and as motivated as anyone found in Silicon Valley," Shipman said. "Tech Friends provides an opportunity for our best and brightest to stay right here in Jonesboro."

By Keith Inman, Sun Staff Writer, inman@jonesborosun.com