Olark moves to bigger downtown Ann Arbor office

Olark is moving to bigger digs in downtown Ann Arbor as the spring officially begins in Michigan.

The software startup creates a messaging platform so businesses and their customers can connect online faster and with fewer headaches. It was launched in Ann Arbor and is upgrading its space from 1,000 square foot office to a 1,500-square-foot office with much better conference rooms at 205.5 S Main St.

"We were playing musical chairs with our conference rooms," says Zach Steindler, chief olarchitect at Olark. "One person would step out and another would go in."

Conference room space is critical to Olark because the startup's employee base is becoming more remote-based. Olark has gone from a staff of 12 people at the beginning of 2013 to 25 today. It has two primary offices in Ann Arbor and Silicon Valley where half of its employees work. The other half work remotely around the world.

Olark has hired three people so far this year. It also has four open positions in office administration, web development, senior UIX engineer and senior mobile engineer. More info about those openings can be found here.

"We're all excited to keep growing our organization," says Steindler, who is also one of the organizers of A2 New Tech Meetup. "We might slow down a little bit, but we're definitely excited to keep growing."

Olark has bootstrapped its way to this point. It hasn’t accepted any sort of seed capital from outside angel investors or venture capitalists and it doesn’t plan to anytime soon.

"All of our growth comes from our customers," Steindler says. "We're very happy to continue growing our company organically."

Source: Zach Steindler, chief olarchitect at Olark
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.