Editor’s note: Device Magic decides to open its U.S. headquarters in Durham rather than Dallas due in part to word-of-mouth recruiting from Triangle entrepreneurs. ExitEvent, a news partner of WRALTechWire, has the story.

DURHAM, N.C. - The Triangle’s best recruiters are its entrepreneurs—the people who choose to build their companies within its bounds despite the lure of better talent, more money or a bigger community elsewhere.

A fancy marketing campaign is just never as effective as good old-fashioned word-of-mouth.

That’s why the story behind Device Magic’s new office in Durham is so compelling. The Johannesburg company’s founders, high school friends Dusan Babich and Mike Welham, knew they needed a headquarters in the U.S.—they offered a mobile technology for field teams and had a potential client list of HVAC, plumbing and other service companies, educators and nonprofits, building inspectors and delivery companies.

In South Africa, the men raised money in the mid-2000s for a developer runtime technology for Nokia and Symbian-powered smartphones. When the iPhone came out and eroded the marketshare of Microsoft and Nokia, they shut down and pursued consulting work. Consulting led to building applications that replaced paper processes, and that led to the creation of Device Magic in 2010.

The full story can be read online.