CHICAGO—SIM Partners, a provider of social marketing technology, just relocated to 14,500-square-feet of space at 30 N. LaSalle St. from suburban Evanston, where it has resided since its founding in 2006. Like an increasing number of tech start-ups in the Chicago area, the firm has proven itself to customers and investors and needs more visibility and space to operate efficiently. SIM recently received $8 million in Series A funding from River Cities Capital Funds and Jump Capital, and plans to double its headcount within the next year.
Tiffany Winne, senior managing director of Savills Studley's Chicago office, represented SIM in the transaction and Vicki Noonan and Greg Tait of Tishman Speyer represented the landlord.
“I'm seeing tech firms increasingly agnostic about what downtown submarket they go to,” Winne tells GlobeSt.com. Instead of focusing on the West Loop and River North submarkets, the historic choice of most tech or creative-oriented firms, many will follow SIM into the more traditional office buildings in the Central Loop. “It's not concentrated anymore; it's definitely spread out.”
SIM's move to the Central Loop provides the company the bandwidth to double its staff to over 100 employees, she adds. Furthermore, “moving to 30 N. LaSalle St. will enable SIM Partners to be right in the mix with like companies and potential clients, simultaneously attracting the most desirable recruits. The location and modernized infrastructure seamlessly compliments the culture SIM has worked tirelessly to cultivate.”
Amy Cooper, chief financial officer of SIM, says that both the move and plans for growth have been spurred largely from the spike in market demand for the company's Velocity platform, a SaaS-based tool that helps its clients use local, social and mobile marketing. “As the market for local digital advertising is estimated to double to $44.5 billion by 2017, SIM Partners is well-positioned to remain one of the key players in hyper-local search. We are pleased with the office location and space that Savills Studley has worked with us to secure in the Loop, as we are confident it will effectively suit our future growth and evolving needs.”
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Brian J. Rogal
Brian J. Rogal is a Chicago-based freelance writer with years of experience as an investigative reporter and editor, most notably at The Chicago Reporter, where he concentrated on housing issues. He also has written extensively on alternative energy and the payments card industry for national trade publications.
