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Where The Streets Are Paved With Gold

New US East Coast Office. New Sales Director.

The Irish abroad …….

For 400 Years us Irish have been heading to America, either following the stories of streets paved with gold in New York and Boston, seeking fame and fortune in California or just sunny weather and a glimpse of Mickey Mouse in Orlando.

Growing up in grey old Ireland we saw the US on our TV screens and dreamt of driving the streets of San Francisco, hitting the open road on Route 66 and finishing at sunset in the Florida Keys, never quite realizing that that would be a particularly long drive and we should probably bring a packed lunch.

In the old days, however ‘going to America’ was a life sentence, most never came home, choosing instead to build new lives for themselves, far away from the ‘auld sod’, sending money home when they could and stories and tales when they couldn’t.

America the Beautiful

Three years ago Davra made our own ‘great journey’ and opened our first US office in Sunnyvale, CA. Brian McGlynn, my co-founder and friend took his family and headed west to stake our own little claim for a brighter future and a piece of the burgeoning IoT market that was growing there. Silicon Valley was the obvious choice, IoT was in its infancy, everyone who was anyone was based there so that’s where we needed to be.

Fast forward to 2018 and Davra are on a roll, rapid sales growth, the best technology and most evolved partner base in the industry and over 50% of our revenues coming from the US, so it’s time to move to Phase 2.

The ‘Nutmeg’ State

Having built our base it was time to expand and although our natural Irish inclination was to gravitate to New York, Boston or Chicago as we started our planning an unlikely destination started to emerge. With direct flights from Dublin, a fantastic location halfway between two of the largest population centers in North America and a thriving and most importantly very supportive local tech community we found ourselves wooed by the wonderful State of Connecticut. Helped by our good friends in Connecticut Innovations (big shout out to the fantastic Doug Roth) this week we opened our first East Coast office in District, New Haven.

A Connecticut Yankee….

A shiny new office is useless without people to fill it so we’ve taken on our very own ‘Connecticut Yankee’ Ryan Evans, to run the show (using a reference to an obscure Mark Twain book and even more obscure Bing Crosby movie is probably risky but those of you too young to remember them can Google it). Ryan comes to us with huge experience in the tech industry and the energy and drive of a man who knows what’s needed in a startup. This week we’ll get him to Dublin for a few days and find out if he can socialize like a proper Irishman and I’ll be able to report back to you all on how he gets on. Then we all head to Vegas for Cisco GSX to test his skills in the real world.

Onwards and Upwards

For a company in our position, in a market as dynamic as IOT every decision is critical. Expanding was a no brainer, Ryan was a slam dunk and we hope to add to the team over time with equally great people. Connecticut was an unusual choice but its already working out, after all for an Internet of Things company how could we possibly go wrong moving to a state that starts with ‘Connect’.