INFOCU5 recently moved its California office to Grand Junction, relocating a dozen employees in the process and adding over 100 new hires in the first few weeks. The company, which is the second and largest in the state to receive the Location Neutral Employee (LONE) incentive, expects to ramp up to more than 400 employees over the next three years. Here’s more from the Telluride Daily Planet:

An initiative of the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) has helped INFOCU5, a company with Telluride roots, to fully relocate and centralize their operations and growth efforts to the Western Slope of Colorado.

The move saw the tech startup, whose founder and CEO is Telluride native Jake Bush, transfer its final California operations from Pasadena, California, to Grand Junction, a process that is now complete.

The software company, which offers software solutions aimed at helping organizations manage their customer service and sales capacities, received the state’s first Location Neutral Employee Incentive (LONE) for the Western Slope from OEDIT. The incentive provides companies with a Job Growth Incentive Tax Credit and additional cash incentive for each remote worker employed in an eligible rural county of the state…

The relocation, which sees the company’s operations in its newest Grand Junction location, in Denver and its head office in Telluride, has significant advantages for the region, not only bringing jobs to rural Colorado, but jobs that, according to a company press release, are high-quality tech roles with an average annual salary of over $62,000, an amount higher than the most recently available median income for Mesa County of $53,600.

Courtesy photo via Telluride Daily Planet article shows Jake Bush, founder and CEO of INFOCU5

‘INFOCU5’s journey to be fully-based and grown here in Colorado has been a true labor of love and made possible by the support of long-time locals, OEDIT, the Grand Junction Economic Partnership and the region’s growing YPO chapter,’ Bush remarked. ‘Moving forward, the software company looks at this opportunity as one to join forces and partner with professionals, businesses and individuals to work together as a collective to enhance and strengthen the existing relationships across the Western Slope that are kept alive by our rural-based communities.’

Bush pointed out that INFOCU5’s hybrid work environment, in which employees can work from home or in the office, means it can hire from rural communities across the Western Slope. These communities, he stressed, include places like Telluride and Montrose, whose residents may not think they have much in common, but which Bush describes as part of one interconnected “economic ecosystem”.

‘This isn’t just a personal initiative because I am from here and I love it here,’ Bush said of relocating his business. ‘Our focus is rural-based Colorado. The relocation is an opportunity to truly tie these communities together in a positive way.'”

Read the full article in the Telluride Daily Planet.