Why We Moved Our HQ: Q&A with ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman

ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman 3x2 (ServiceNow image used with permission)

In a development that was widely expected, but not officially disclosed (until now), the cloud-based IT service provider ServiceNow (NYSE: [[ticker:NOW]]) has moved its headquarters to Santa Clara, CA, from San Diego, where the company was founded.

ServiceNow CEO Frank Slootman confirmed the move in a recent e-mail exchange with Xconomy.

The move wasn’t exactly a secret. Tom Clancy, chairman of the local industry group Software San Diego, told me he knew that ServiceNow had relocated its headquarters last year. In any event, Slootman agreed to explain his reasons for making the move. His responses to my questions have been lightly edited for readability:

Xconomy: When did you consolidate ServiceNow’s executive offices in Santa Clara?

Frank Slootman: The decision was formalized in Q4 2013.

Xconomy: Why did you move?

FS: The company grew more Northern California-centric as we expanded operations dramatically in the past 3 years. We have had a ferocious appetite for talent and we felt constrained on talent quantity, diversity, and quality in Southern California. My management team and I both had a limited history in San Diego, and we naturally gravitated to our Northern California networks for recruiting and staffing. Most of our directors also now reside in Northern California, so our board meetings had been alternating between the two sites for some time.

ServiceNow logo 300x200That said, the big success story is that the company emerged and broke out from San Diego soil. Fred Luddy, the company founder, is still at ServiceNow [as Chief Product officer], and working from our San Diego operations.

X: How big is the ServiceNow workforce now? Where are your biggest offices?

FS: We now exceed 1,900 in full-time staff. San Diego is our largest site [with 400-plus employees], followed by Santa Clara, CA; Kirkland, WA; London; and Amsterdam.

X: How is the pool of software talent lacking in San Diego?

FS: At ServiceNow, we’ve grown almost 10-fold in the past 3 years. With our hiring standards, we were starting to

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.