Just over a year ago, Indiana Governor Mike Pence joked about the audacity of young people when he told the story of Santiago Jaramillo launching Bluebridge apps from his dorm room during a major jobs announcement. For some, it was the first time they were hearing of Bluebridge or the company’s “mobile apps as a service” business model — a platform providing mobile apps that are constantly up-to-date for a flat annual cost.

Fast forward to today and the governor has to be thrilled with Bluebridge’s progress. At its current rate of growth, Bluebridge will meet its incentive projections two years early (though I doubt Jaramillo or his accountant would want me to put that in writing).

Here is just a partial list of what’s happened at Bluebridge since being the very first startup to emerge from Launch Fishers and roll out on its own.

  • Employee Growth — Bluebridge more than doubled headcount from 12 to 25 full-time employees, and a few part-timers bring that count total to 30 FTEs.
  • Sales Growth — Revenue is up 200 percent! Those numbers would place Bluebridge in the top 10 of Indiana’s fastest growing companies listed on the annual Inc. 5000.
  • Customer Growth — The customer base has grown by 150 percent. The sales team added one and a half customers for every customer they had a year ago.
  • Venture Capital Growth — Santiago and his executive team raised $1.5 million in venture capital in two different rounds in 2014.

 

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All of this growth has fueled further Bluebridge expansion and talent attraction. The company is moving into a new 9,000 square foot space in Fishers, Ind., in April, which is twice the size of their previous offices.

Santiago also told us that they recently hired two senior-level contributors to fill new positions necessitated by the rapid growth.

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Mallory Lee, Vice President, Marketing Operations — Mallory joins Bluebridge after nearly five years at ExactTarget, where she held a variety of roles and ascended to become the marketing budget and operations manager. Most recently, she implemented marketing systems at Formstack that contributed to its 60 percent revenue growth in 2014.

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Dave Sears, Controller — Dave brings more than 15 years of experience in high-growth accounting to Bluebridge, including multiple leadership positions at ExactTarget (most recently as Director of Financial Reporting and Technical Accounting) and Ernst & Young.

Recognizing Excellence

We learned last week that for the third year in a row, Bluebridge has been nominated for two TechPoint Mira Awards. Earlier this month, the Indianapolis Business Journal unveiled its annual Forty Under 40 list of rising stars who have achieved significant success and plan to stay in Indianapolis to build upon that success. Santiago Jaramillo was the youngest person included on this year’s list — he’s 25.

 

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