How Google Fiber Reshaped Where Startups Do Business

The Triangle has become one of the strongest entrepreneurial tech hubs in the United States offering quality of life and a lower cost of living that Silicon Valley cannot compete with. Along with that has come a bevy of innovation and small companies able to compete on a global scale. It has also brought about a growth rate that some say will add an additional 1 million people to the Triangle by the end of 2018, which has both the locals and the infrastructure struggling to keep up with the demands.

Akin to our overburdened, jammed highways during rush hours, local company Dmorph Inc. found the infrastructure of the existing information superhighway couldn’t keep up with their growth. In July 2017, Dmorph Inc. moved their physical office location from the American Undergound in Durham to office space in neighboring Morrisville based exclusively on the availability of faster, more robust internet of Google Fiber. A new twist on the old adage: location, location, location.

This is a prime example of technology reshaping the way companies do business and in this case the way a tech company physically does business. Dmorph’s golden child and primary product is eSecureSend. eSecureSend is a large data transfer service that is bucking the 40 year norm of companies relying on unreliable FTP and curtailing the expensive, time consuming and environmentally harmful practice of shipping hard drives.

For the lay person, the large portion of large data transfer service referenced here is data that is 1000x past the max capacity of a free Dropbox account. This is a service for entities that are sending terabytes of data as a routine operating practice. It takes a lot to make those beautiful 4k movies and shows you’re enjoying. Primary customers include media entities, government entities and even medical entities. All of which means the data needs securely transferred at the speed of business.

While the invent and physical logistics of Google Fiber has come with some challenges, many of which have been reported in the Triangle, the product itself is solid. Like most startups, Dmorph started out by utilizing AWS and Google Cloud. Then came the point of business where the best financial and strategic move was to get off the cloud and come down to business owned servers. This point of a tech company’s growth is almost a modern day milestone for tech business success.

At this juncture the reduced costs paired with increased transfer speeds offered by Fiber restructured Dmorph’s balance sheet to where they could invest in the hardware needed to create their own servers. It trickles down to their customer base by allowing them to be more flexible in their pricing model without sacrificing service or security.

Dmorph had been presented the options to partner with a data center, however they would have continually faced data and/or bandwidth caps that would limit the performance of their accelerated file transfer service.

As company spokesperson Yasmeen Kashef put it, “We have big dreams to make file transfer secure, reliable and effective. Having access to high-speed internet, like Google Fiber is just the first step. And because Google Fiber exists, all the other telecoms are building their high-speed internet services too. We look forward to ever increasing high-speed internet.

“The other plus is that it’s helped us get together as a team more often. With our Durham office, half of our team members would have to drive about 40 minutes. Now that we’re in Morrisville, it’s a 15min drive for everyone. Even in the age of technology and at a tech firm, more face-to-face collaboration is a bonus.”

At the end of the day human interaction and location, location, location still reign supreme in business.