TubeMogul, a Bay Area startup that runs a platform distributing pay-per-view video ads across the Internet, announced earlier this month that it is opening an office in downtown Detroit. TubeMogul joins companies like Twitter in setting up shop in Dan Gilbert’s Madison Building and deploying new technologies to chase Big Three ad dollars.
TubeMogul’s Jen Dawson, a Michigan native, says she had been working from her home in Royal Oak, MI, and told a friend working for Twitter that she was in the market for local office space. Though she had been looking in Detroit suburbs like Birmingham and Troy without success, he suggested she check out the Madison Building downtown after singing its praises. “I totally fell in love,” Dawson explains. “Not only did we really love the space, but we like what Dan Gilbert is doing [in developing downtown Detroit], too.”
Detroit Venture Partners, a VC firm with an office in the Madison, helped recruit TubeMogul to downtown Detroit, but Dawson says it was only a matter of time before her company needed a Detroit office to continue to go after automotive accounts. “While we’re based in Silicon Valley, we knew that to be competitive we needed to open an office in Detroit,” she says. “It made sense to go downtown because of the resources and talent there. Being in that space has already helped the company. We’re paying more attention to Detroit than ever.”
Dawson admits that, when she first brought it up, locating TubeMogul’s Michigan office in the heart of Detroit was a tough sell. “In the beginning, [CEO Brett Wilson] was very concerned,” she notes. “It took him a couple of weeks to sign off. Now, he’s blown away by what he’s seen.”
TubeMogul has a team of three in Detroit, but expects that number to double by the end of summer, Dawson adds.
