May 9, 2013 – Yesterday, crowds gathered at Ayers Plaza near downtown Gainesville – including the College of Engineering’s Dean Abernathy, the mayor, and members of the city commission – to welcome the city’s newest resident, Mobiquity, Inc. Bill Seibel, CEO and founder of the technology firm, which specializes in mobile applications, explained their metric for choosing Gainesville as their newest branch:
“. . . we believe if we can find a city in the U.S. that has access to world-class engineering talent, and if that city is a city where students that graduate wanted to live afterwards and work there, if that city had a startup culture, and if that city carried a cost structure that was less than a Boston or a New York or a San Francisco, and if that city could put all that together and welcome us the way you have to help us get started here, then we could drive more value to our clients . . . [and] bring those jobs back to the U.S. . . .”
The move promises to open 260 new jobs in the area, and opportunities to partner with the College of Engineering – not just in finding talent for these positions, but also in research and development.
Abernathy spoke at Mobiquity’s welcome event, “Companies today want engineers who are also capable of innovating and leading. We call this the New Engineer and this is the type of engineer we graduate . . . [Companies also] need access to world class technical expertise and facilities, which can be willingly brought to bear to assist industry with their R&D needs . . . We are developing programs, like the Innovation Institute and the Engineering Industrial Experiment Station, to make us a strong partner for industry.”
Mobiquity will open its doors in June with an office at 237 SW Seventh Terrace, in the block southeast of the UF Innovation Hub. This district was designed in a partnership between UF, the local community and the state, and has come to serve as the catalyst to attract employers, students and graduates.