Motive, an AI-powered integration and technology platform, continues its global expansion, choosing Austin, Texas, as the next location for its newest office. This comes as the company is expanding its U.S. presence to better support customers across Texas and develop regional talent.
The new Austin facility encompasses 11,000 square feet in the Alto Building, located in East Austin. The company projects an initial workforce of approximately 200 employees at this location. While the office currently houses predominantly sales professionals, Motive anticipates growth across multiple departments.
One of the reasons Motive selected Austin stems from several strategic considerations. Primarily, the region hosts a substantial number of Motive’s existing customers and prospects in the physical operations space.
“We have an enormous amount of customers and prospects in the area,” said Tristan Poehler, SVP, GTM Strategy and Operations at Motive, in an interview with FreightWaves. “The Texas economy is really built on companies in the physical operations space.”
The location also carries personal significance for Motive’s CEO and co-founder Shoaib Makani, who has strong ties to the area.
“If you check out his interviews from this year, he’s talked a lot about his time at the Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science and growing up in Austin and the big impact that it had on him,” said Shu White, chief legal officer and head of people at Motive. “He knows it’s a huge tech hub and great place to hire for a lot of sales and engineering talent.”
Another goal for Motive’s new office is to build an active presence in the community.
Motive has initiated an internship program and established connections with local educational institutions, including the University of Texas. This is part of an effort to cultivate a pipeline of emerging talent. For students, this provides them with valuable experience in a tech company.
“We’ve instituted an internship program that I expect to continue to build on. As we invest more in our company in this community, I expect that to be both really good for folks as they get a sense of what working at a late-stage, fast-moving technology company can be like, but also in terms of our future hires that we’re able to make,” Tristan said.
The push for return to office and the ability to develop talent in person is another reason behind the expansion. “A lot of folks coming out of school who want to be in software or the technology space generally are not gonna have that opportunity because of so many companies going full remote,” Tristan noted. “We’ve really made a conscious decision to arrest that and say, we have a much better opportunity to develop people, yes, in sales, but also in product and R&D organizations and enablement and recruiting across the board just by having folks sit next to someone.”
“We have leaders in our product team in Austin and elsewhere in Texas, and so it’s great to have product and sales sitting in the same place with our customers because they can really have those conversations live, face to face,” Shu explained. “That’s how we improve our products, that combination of people live, sitting in a room together, and we really can feel that growing and thriving in Austin.”
Looking ahead, Motive projects significant growth at the Austin location over the next several years. This expansion follows recent office openings in the United Kingdom and San Francisco, demonstrating the company’s commitment to strategic geographical expansion.
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