Chattanooga-based user experience start-up firm Skuid Inc. is opening a sales office near London's Heathrow Airport, to better serve the company's growing overseas customer base, particularly in Western Europe.
The company announced the expansion Thursday, adding a third location. The new office will operate as the subsidiary Skuid UK Limited.
Skuid owns, operates and sells cloud-based application and portal creation software for businesses, and emphasizes making design and layout easy for its customers, particularly ones without coding and programming experience.
Skuid allows customers to build and design made-to-order apps using only drag-and-drop tools.
Skuid already has offices in Chattanooga and San Francisco. The company started with seven employees in 2013, and now employs more than 60 people, most of whom work in Chattanooga.
According to company officials, Skuid now serves customers in 31 countries. In a news release, Ken McElrath, CEO and founder of Skuid, said despite the company's rapid growth, it is committed to its Chattanooga head- quarters.
"Some influential folks have tried to get us to move our offices to the Bay Area," he said. "We have a small office there, but we want to keep our headquarters in Chattanooga, for lots of compelling reasons."
Among them, McElrath said the availability of affordable and flexible office space and Gig-speed Internet are important for the company.
"It's kind of humorous and sad to do a GoToMeeting or Google Hangout with our team members in the Bay Area," said McElrath. "They constantly lose their connections."
Last November, Skuid placed third overall on Entrepreneur magazine's top small company cultures list, for having a high-performance company culture in the workplace.
Learn more at www.skuidify.com.
Contact staff writer Alex Green at agreen@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6480.