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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowSoftware firm TinderBox Inc. will leave its increasingly cramped quarters in the Meridian-Kessler neighborhood and stretch out into a pricier seventh-floor perch over Monument Circle on Aug. 1.
Company president and co-founder Dustin Sapp expects the new 8,800-square-foot headquarters in the Lacy Building, 54 Monument Circle, to boost the three-year-old firm’s profile and help recruit employees as the company pursues plans to hire nearly 100 people over the next few years.
The move to the center of the city will place TinderBox near major clients and some of the Indianapolis technology industry’s biggest companies, such as ExactTarget Inc. and Angie’s List Inc.
TinderBox will move out of its 1,400-square-foot offices at 5255 Winthrop Ave., which is home to Developer Town, a tech startup incubator. The move downtown was a must as TinderBox grows from its current 30 employees.
“You try finding 100 parking spaces in Broad Ripple,” Sapp said with a laugh.
Sapp started the company with Kristian Andersen and Mike Fitzgerald in 2010 by pooling their savings with $150,000 from angel investors. Andersen runs design consultancy Kristian Andersen and Associates, and Fitzgerald is executive vice president for corporate development at ExactTarget.
TinderBox provides solutions for managing, tracking, streamlining and automating sales proposals, presentations and contracts. The three men, who have started multiple tech companies in Indianapolis, came up with the idea for TinderBox after encountering pains in their own ventures with sales proposals.
Investors have thrown their support into the business.
In February, TinderBox secured $1.3 million from Gravity Ventures and Halo Capital Group in Indianapolis, as well as FundersClub, a San Francisco-based online network, and other investors.
The Indiana Economic Development Corp. announced in March that it would provide up to $1.4 million in performance-based tax credits to TinderBox in exchange for investing $540,000 and hiring 95 people by 2016.
Moving downtown will mean higher rent for the young company.
Building owner Lacy Diversified Industries Ltd. was asking $19.50 per square foot annually, or about $172,000 a year, for the TinderBox space, according to a June real estate listing. Sapp declined to disclose how much TinderBox will pay under its lease, which will last more than three years.
He also declined to discuss the private firm’s finances, but said sales have grown every month since the business began.
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