If you ask CEO of Copado, Tim Elliott, about the value proposition of his business, a significant part of his answer boils down to this: Less divorce.
“We have over 1,700 customers around the world that are using our software to make sure everything goes smoothly,” Elliott told WWL’s Newell Normand on Wednesday. “What that really leads to is people getting to go home for dinner. One of our customers, CISCO, actually had so many users that they were tracking how many people were getting divorced on their (DevOps) teams for staying until 2 or 3 at night.”
After implementing Copado, Elliot explains, "They came back to us and told us that they had less divorces."
A more formal answer to the question, “What does Copado do?” would be that it’s an automation company that monitors software deployments and offers a slate of solutions for massive platforms, allowing software professionals more peace of mind and a less intensive work environment.
Elliott explained that the company was founded in Madrid 13 years ago by developers who were doing large-scale software releases for Salesforce.
“What was happening is that people were staying at the office all night because things were breaking, so they wanted to build a piece of software that would help developers make sure that everything got delivered with quality and didn't break. So, for example, if you're filling out a build for Entergy, you might have Copado sitting in the background making sure that the software’s not breaking and that everything goes smoothly.”
Another company picks New Orleans as its corporate home
“We’re very excited to have moved our headquarters from Chicago to New Orleans,” Elliott said.
The announcement makes Copado the third company in the past month to choose the Crescent City as its home base.
Elliott explains the decision to move to New Orleans, once the time was right, became clear for many reasons.
Ribbon cutting following Copado to New Orlan announcementDowntown Development District of New Orleans
“I moved here a number of years back during COVID,” he says. “And when we had 3 people, if you asked me if we were going to move our HQ to NOLA, I was like, huh?”
But as the company grew, those in charge began asking serious questions about how to deal with growing pains.
“We had 10 or 15 people crammed into an office for 4 or 5 people,” Elliott says.
That’s when talks began with GNO and state representatives from the Louisiana Office of Economic Development.
“We started looking at the benefits of moving a business here. Then the current federal administration changed the tax laws, writing off software development costs,” Elliot says. “We looked at India or Spain or other low-cost places to do software development.”
As they mulled options, especially after factoring in state and federal incentives, Elliott explains it became clear that New Orleans was a highly competitive market.
“New Orleans has a lot of office space right now and is very attractive from a standpoint of leasing office space,” Elliott stated. “When you combine low costs from office space with incentives from the state, and with the help we got from GNO, and with changes in federal law…we said, ‘Hey, let's go build in America. And let's build in Louisiana.’”
Why New Orleans won out
Along with affordable and abundant office space, Elliott explained that a strong list of factors make New Orleans an attractive place to hire and train young talent, something that isn’t often the case in more established U.S. tech markets.
“Even though my family is from New Orleans, I lived in San Francisco all of my life. One of the problems you have in San Francisco is you really can't build sustainability,” said Elliott. “People job hop from job to job to job. We’re happy to pay people a competitive salary here in New Orleans, knowing we’re going to be able to invest in them, and have them invest in us. That doesn't exist everywhere in the country. That was another really attractive part of this move.”
Copado CEO Tim ElliottDowntown Development District New Orleans
Copado is set to bring 59 jobs to New Orleans, and, at an average salary of $103,000— 54% higher than the average Orleans Parish salary.
“We're building AI out the Wazoo right now. I think we’re going to build an AI center. We already built an AI laboratory here in New Orleans,” says Elliott of Copado’s current direction.
