Why did WillowTree, a Charlottesville, Va., mobile developer, choose Durham over 30 other cities for its second mobile development office? Exit Event’s Laura Baverman has the answer.

It was on the last day of a nationwide tour that WillowTree founder and CEO Michael Prichard visited Durham and became convinced it was the only city in the nation for his fast-moving mobile development shop to expand.

Within three days of his tours of downtown Durham, Duke University and the American Tobacco Campus and meetings with longtime friend Tobias McNulty, founder and CEO of the local Caktus Consulting Group, he’d signed an initial lease at American Underground for a team of as many as 20 developers, designers, project managers.

In Durham, he’d begin to build a team that could eventually rival the 100-person workforce he established over eight years serving clients like HBO, Zappos, PepsiCo and GE in Charlottesville, Va.
Besides its proximity, affordability and great universities from which WillowTree can recruit, Prichard was impressed by the vibrancy of the entrepreneurial and tech communities.

“Durham has energy—the right things are happening at the right time,” he says. So much that he wants to copy some of the momentum and bring it back to Charlottesville. The new office opens in August.

For the rest of the story see Exit Event: http://exitevent.com/article/willowtree-apps-of-charlottesville-opens-in-durham-150724