Nashville is trying to woo Chicago tech workers, touting milder weather and shorter commutes. But will the pitch work?
By LISA DONOVAN
CHICAGO TRIBUNE |
NOV 25, 2021 AT 6:00 AM
Music City is making a big overture to Chicago’s tech workers.
Amid a population boom and Big Tech creating outposts there, Nashville has launched a marketing campaign to woo tech workers from Chicago and other big cities by touting the fact it has no state income tax, shorter commute times, milder weather and a famous music scene.
If this type of poaching stunt sounds somewhat familiar, it’s because Chicago’s given as good as it gets. In September, World Business Chicago, the public-private operation that serves as the city’s economic development arm, took out a full-page ad in the Sunday Dallas Morning News, inviting corporations to head north for more liberal abortion and voting laws — a swipe at restrictive legislation the Lone Star State passed in recent months.
While there are plenty of Chicago cheerleaders prepared to offer counterpoints to all Nashville says it has on offer, there’s some data out there suggesting the Chicago-to-Nashville pipeline is humming. Between 2014 and 2018, the net migration of residents moving from the Chicago region to Nashville was 1,629 annually, a spokeswoman for the Nashville campaign says, citing U.S. census data. That would make the Chicago region, defined by the Census Bureau as the city, suburbs, parts of southern Wisconsin and northwest Indiana, the largest source of new residents in the Nashville region.
Tech workers at Chicago's tech incubator, 1871, on Nov 22, 2021. Nashville has launched a marketing campaign to woo tech workers from Chicago and other big cities. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
And it’s not just Chicagoans relocating there. Nashville saw an impressive population boom over the last decade, driven largely by Middle Tennessee, where multiple counties make up the Nashville metropolitan statistical area.
Nashville-Davidson County saw a 14.2% population boost, adding about 89,200 people through the decade, census numbers released earlier this year show. Its suburbs saw a bigger percentage boost, with Williamson County increasing by 35.2%, or 64,500 people, and Rutherford County jumping up 30%, or about 78,900 people. Several other Middle Tennessee counties saw population increases that exceeded 20%.
Hoping to capitalize on the growth the Greater Nashville Technology Council, which bills itself as the advocacy group for the region’s $8 billion information technology ecosystem, rolled out in October “TechIntoNashville” — a marketing campaign targeting not only Chicago but other cities with highly skilled tech workforces including San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C.
The campaign has the blessing of the city’s Mayor John Cooper.
Asked to comment on the project, Cooper’s spokeswoman Andrea Fanta wrote in an email: “The demand for great work in a great city exists right here, right now. We know tech workers have other cities to choose from. Coders and engineers can go anywhere they want. But they’re not going to find a more vibrant, creative city than Nashville — where the “original coding,” songwriting, exists at its best.”
Beyond weather and zero state income tax, Nashville is also touting that Big Tech has already set up shop in the region, including Amazon, Facebook and Oracle. The campaign’s goal is to double Nashville and Middle Tennessee’s tech workforce by 2025.
They’re getting the word out via targeted marketing, including search engine marketing, PR and social media stories from and about tech workers who have made the move to Nashville.
For his part the blunt-talking Howard Tullman, former CEO of Chicago’s tech incubator 1871, says “not to be hard on Nashville, but I don’t know of anyone moving there” in Chicago’s tech industry.
He said he can see someone making the jump for music, noting that technology is essential to the production process.
“There’s a lot of people saying to themselves they don’t need to be in the central city to be in tech,” Tullman said. And plenty of established companies and startups are finding that having a downtown office in a major city is a low priority.
Howard Tullman, former CEO of 1871, at 1871 located in the Merchandise Mart in Chicago on Aug. 25, 2015. (Jose M. Osorio / Chicago Tribune)
He said Chicago, however, could be an easy target for out-of-state tech poachers. The pandemic and uptick in violence could sway someone to rethink living here, said Tullman, blaming Mayor Lori Lightfoot, at least in part, for her administration’s response to crime.
“Up to COVID and the crime, I think the migration was coming to Chicago from San Francisco, from New York because of the standard of living and the cost of living,” Tullman said. “It was clear that a lot of people thought they didn’t need to be in San Francisco or the Valley” to be in tech.
Lightfoot didn’t respond to Tullman’s criticism, but the administration made Michael Fassnacht, the city’s chief marketing officer and head of World Business Chicago, available to talk up Chicago’s tech scene and press that Lightfoot, who is dealing with the same spike in crime as mayors of other major metros, is prioritizing efforts to curb the violence.
As for out-of-towners coming for Chicago workers, Fassnacht says: “First of all, I’m very competitive and I always appreciate when a great city like Nashville” gets the word out that they’re hiring.
“We have been pretty active on telling our narrative as global tier one tech hub,” he said, pointing to both the venture capital flowing into the city as well as companies, in general, relocating here or expanding.
To that point, the Department of Defense announced last month it will open a new office in Chicago next year, hoping to plug into the local tech community as it seeks to fend off cyberattacks and related threats.
Fassnacht said he wishes Nashville well, but said the fact is companies and tech workers are relocating from traditional tech hubs on the coasts to Chicago. He pointed to 70 companies — not just tech firms though — that have set up shop in Chicago this year. And he sees Cisco Systems’ announcement that it would be moving its offices in Rosemont to downtown Chicago as one of the feathers in the city’s cap, even as some observers say businesses swapping the city for the suburb or vice versa doesn’t do much for the regional economy.
Fassnacht and Tullman both said Chicago has the three things you need for the tech industry to flourish — venture capital, several first-class universities and a talent pool created by those universities and colleges.
Despite the pandemic, roughly $3 billion in venture capital has flowed into local tech startups in 2020 and Fassnacht expects it will exceed $7 billion this year.
Another barometer of that success? This year 12 tech firms in Chicago reached “unicorn” status, an industry term for privately held companies valued at $1 billion or more. Overall the city counts 21 unicorns.
Evelyne Peterson works on her laptop at 1871, Chicago's tech incubator, on Nov, 22, 2021. (Antonio Perez / Chicago Tribune)
While Nashville is touting its affordability, Garry Cooper, CEO of software company Rheaply, says high-skilled tech workers, whether they’re engineers, in operations — “it’s doubtful their number one kind of criterion for leaving ... is their net cost of living.
“There are plenty of reasons why people move — especially people who move to big cities — and it has something to do with the livability, the safety, the opportunities,” Cooper said, explaining that employees also want to know that there’s a larger business community so if the job they’re in isn’t going well, there are other places to look. Culture and entertainment are other factors.
Noting that Conde Nast for four years running has voted Chicago the best big city in the U.S., Cooper says that “if I’m being quite honest, I don’t put them in the same (category) — Nashville and Chicago — nor do I as a business owner and executive here in Chicago, worry about people moving. And quite frankly, if they want to move to Nashville — we’ll help them move there. It’s my position for our employees to be where they can be the best — themselves personally and themselves as professionals.”
Cooper hasn’t had an exodus of talent from his company, hasn’t heard of it happening in his Chicago tech circle, or even seen data that would hint at that. Just the same, he said, it’s up to city, county and other elected leaders in charge of building up and maintaining the communities where business is flourishing not to rest on their laurels.
He said there’s an onus on those leaders to ensure the message is out that the city is open for business, that it’s tech friendly. Cooper isn’t as keen on the idea of one city trying to poach companies or employees from another.
The conversation should be more centered around “how do we have more tech workers? “How do we have more tech companies?” he said, adding that he’d like to see more diversity in the industry, including women-founded tech companies. “So if I were a mayor in a city like Nashville or a city like Chicago, I’d be asking the question, ‘how do I get more people in my community to start businesses and how do I keep them here?’ versus ‘how do I attract businesses from another city to move here?’ I think we should be thinking about a strategy of increasing it, not redirecting a piece of it.”