Trek of the Techies

Connecticut's got nothing on the hottest high-tech hot spots - but something is keeping at least some young talent here

Business New Haven (09/18/2006)

Why stay in Connecticut when the grass is greener in many other places of the United States?

Maybe it's the changing leaves or the four seasons - but Boston has that, too. Maybe it's the lower cost of living (at least compared to Silicon Valley), because it is certainly not support from the state that keeps young tech professionals here.

In fact, it's probably the same dedication and hard work that has built professional success for these young individuals that keeps them here. Another, maybe, is simple inertia: Once you call someplace home - even if it doesn't measure up to everywhere else - it's hard to up and leave. So they stay, but not without some hesitation or wonder.

"I have to say that the market here is pretty good for us," says David Pociu, co-founder and chief technical officer at InsiTech in Cheshire. That said, "It's not California, and it's not Massachusetts, and it could always be better."

Pociu says his stay in Connecticut would be easier if the state would just push technology a bit harder.

"When they took out the research-and-development tax credit, we lost something huge that would help us get more [workers] at a pay rate that we could afford," Pociu says.

Since InsiTech's software customers are scattered around the globe, the company relies on Connecticut more for finding the right workforce than it does for customers.

"It would be much easier to find qualified people if we were on the West Coast or in Massachusetts, but we still get enough for what we need right now," Pociu allows. "But when we grow, we may run into problems.

"We have no plans to leave right now, but when we do grow, we may need to open offices in other locations," Pociu adds. However, he reassures, "They'll be additional - not instead of - Connecticut."

Pociu and his partner Jim Villano attended the University of Connecticut and stayed here to do business, in spite of their full awareness that there are great opportunities beyond the Constitution State.

Pociu was director of IT with Industrial Holdings Inc. from 1995 to 1999. He holds a bachelor's in computer science and engineering as well as an MBA from UConn. He also holds a membership in the Mensa Society. His expertise is in programming languages including Java, C++, Basic, SQL, C, Pascal, and databases such as Oracle, MS-SQL, OpenInsight, etc. He has spoken at Java User Group meetings and Sun Java Tools User Group meetings, as well as various Intl-Spectrum conferences. He is also on the steering committee of the Sun NYC Java Tools User Group.

"I like the quality of life around here and the prices in general are lower compared to Boston," Pociu explains. "Initially we wanted to be between the financial markets of New York and the technology in Boston. We wanted to be able to hire the right people, but also work with companies on Wall Street and New York."

Sean Glass, 26, is chief marketing officer for Higher One, a New Haven business that creates and sells financial-services products to institutions of higher education. Glass acknowledges that the lower cost of doing business beyond Connecticut is appealing. For now, though, he'll resist the temptation to seek greener pastures.

Glass co-founded the Yale Entrepreneurial Society (YES) and saw the organization grow from five to 1,000 members. He has also served on the board of directors of the New Haven chapter of the Connecticut Venture Group and YES. He graduated from Yale five years ago with a B.S. in engineering sciences.

Glass is bright, ambitious, and intuitive. He also realizes that New Haven and its technological capabilities have served Higher One well. The company now employs more than 100 workers at its Science Park location.

"We don't have too much trouble recruiting," Glass says. "We've been able to get seed financing and venture-capital investments here in Connecticut.

"I was just talking to a friend who was born and raised in Seattle - at one point was the youngest engineer at Microsoft," Glass recounts. "He went to Cal Tech, and from there joined a start-up, then went back to Microsoft. His wife came to Yale to do a post-doctoral fellowship, so now they're living here," Glass says.

"In Silicon Valley, if he had an idea, the next day he'd be sitting with VCs to flesh out ideas, and then a few angel investors. A month later, you'd have money and be off and running. Here he's found maybe one person who's interested in investing in his idea before a company is up and running."

Though he was able to attract financing and venture capital here in Connecticut, Glass believes there is still considerable resistance on the part of the investor community here to investing in early-stage businesses.

"Some of that comes from resistance in investing in younger people," Glass says. But that doesn't make sense to him.

"If you're coming right out of school, you're more familiar with what the latest technologies are, and opportunities," he says. "You're also more able to work without a salary and the other things that go with starting a company."

In Connecticut generally, the most successful "technology" companies are the large service and manufacturing organizations that drive the state's economy: insurance firms, large banks, General Electric, United Technologies, other defense contractors and manufacturers. But for many younger professionals, Glass notes, working for some a large, staid organization is simply not as much fun as working with 20 people on something new.

"The state puts such focus on the larger companies and retaining jobs, but that doesn't create a great deal of job growth," Glass observes.

The Regional Growth Partnership (RGP) works on retaining college graduates, but blames lackluster job growth for the fizzling of a program the New Haven-based group launched just last year. The RGP sponsored a program called First Professional Steps, and though it is still trying to do some matching between colleges and universities and employers, the program wasn't as well received as RGP had hoped.

According to RGP head Robert Santy: "In the final analysis, we found that despite making inroads at 12 colleges and universities in the region, and getting employers to put jobs on a Web site and match them, in the absence of job growth, all of this infrastructure wasn't effective. Until we see job growth in some of these areas, we will continue to do the matching, but [job growth] is the fundamental issue."

Santy and Glass agree that, especially when it comes to keeping young technology professionals in Connecticut, state government's economic focus is not on creating opportunity.

"I'm in Connecticut because I went to Yale," Glass says. "We started the company when I was a sophomore, and by the time I graduated we had 20 or so employees and the people we hired are in Connecticut. So we're here and we weren't going to leave."

As with many declarations, however, a "but" soon follows.

"But," Glass allows, "as the company grows, there are questions as to keeping our operations in Connecticut. It's much more expensive. Sure, we could outsource call centers to India - or even Texas for that matter. We could just open another office in another state and with lower wage levels and lower infrastructure costs, it would be vastly cheaper than Connecticut. It might make a lot of sense. It's something that we'll probably consider in the future."

Glass says that Higher One's decision to stay in Connecticut or not will depend on support from state government and a few other factors.

"When you're starting, it is nice to have your call center where your operations are," he observes. "If something goes wrong, your rep is right there to fix it. We have 58 universities as clients right now, nine of them are in Texas and 13 percent of students in Georgia use our checking account."

Higher One doesn't have a single Connecticut college as a client. Since the company's services are most beneficial to universities involved in multiple financial transactions with students - which typically is a function of a high level of financial aid and grants - Glass' alma mater is not a likely customer, at least not for now.

Across town, however, Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) has graduated a few Higher One employees, and may become Higher One's first client in Connecticut.

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