Founded in Loveland in 2011,
Ombud moved to Boulder later that year. CEO Thad Eby relocated the IT-research firm to the first floor of a Victorian home in Uptown on April 1, 2013.
"We really felt there is a professional workforce in Denver," says Eby of the move, dubbing Bouder "a great startup community." However, only one Ombud employee lived in Boulder and Eby says the benefits of the Boulder office were outweighed by cost and convenience.
Today Ombud has seven employees in Denver and two in California, and is looking to add about five local developers by the end of 2013.
Ombud aims to make research on IT solutions more relevant than the analyst-driven model favored by Gartner and Forrester. Eby describes Ombud's platform as the "Consumer Reports of enterprise software," offering a context-based evaluation tool and more than 1,000 technology categories.
Clients include Global 1000 organizations like the U.K.'s National Health Service that spend millions and even billions on IT. "It takes nine to 18 months for them to make these decisions," he says. "We try to optimize the process." Monthly subscriptions to the Ombud platform start at $2,000.
The "100 percent bootstrapped" company is not about IT research and IT research alone, says Eby. "We are avid homebrewers," he says. The Ombud kegerator has two taps: one for a Colorado beer and another for an employee-brewed variety. Currently on the latter: Doppler Effect, named for Ombud employee Andrew Doppler.
Contact Confluence Denver Innovation & Jobs News Editor Eric Peterson with tips and leads for future stories at eric@confluence-denver.com.
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