London-listed Endace is opening a new office in Sunnyvale, California, adding to its US headquarters in Virginia. What makes it a Kiwi company, worthy of its $7.2 million taxpayer grant?
London-listed Endace is opening a new office in Sunnyvale, California, adding to its US headquarters in Virginia.
What makes Endace a Kiwi company?
In part, because we helped bankroll it. The maker of computer network monitoring technology has been given taxpayer funds – including $6.7 million from the current government (on top of an earlier $4.4 million grant).
For our money, we get jobs, and an Endace spokesman told NBR ONLINE none of them would be going away.
The Sunnyvale office in Silicon Valley “will become the company’s global product and marketing hub”, Endace said in a statement.
But that doesn’t mean the company’s Hamilton R&D centre is under threat, a spokesman said (why the Tron? It is a legacy of Endace’s genesis through WaikatoLink, the commercialisation arm of Waikato University).
The company also employs a half dozen staff, through a sub-contractor, for its Christchurch-based manufacturing - jobs that were bought home from Asia.
The spokesman said Endace vice-president for global marketing Tim Nichols had already relocated from New Zealand to the new office in California.
Otherwise, six Silicon Valley staff would be new additions.
“There will be no impact on New Zealand staff numbers.”
Endace has 12 staff at its Virginia corporate headquarters and 190 all up, the spokesman said.
It is great if New Zealand companies can expand globally, generating extra tax dollars, jobs and know-how. And to expand around the world, you need offices around the globe.
But once you list with an overseas exchange, and move your corporate and marketing centres offshore, we're getting into a grey area.
We have also seen some Kiwi techs boosted by few-strings-attached government money, then sold to US firms (Zeacom is the latest) - sometimes with jobs being exported as well.
Personally, I think we should give promising techs a leg-up. But successive governments don't seem to have put much thought into what happens after the money is handed over.
Endace co-founder Selwyn Pellet - the opinionated entrepreneur whom a lot of long-time readers will most strongly associate with the company - has now sold most of his shares left its board.
He recently talked to NBR ONLINE about his early days as Endace CEO - particulary a certain jaunt to China. Read: Govt naïve about Huawei – security insider details Beijing experience
