Why Tech Companies Are Flocking to Lafayette, LA
Uncover what makes this Louisiana area so enticing to businesses.
One thing Lafayette, Louisiana, is good at is getting people — and companies — to plant roots in the region. Tech companies, in particular, find this area highly appealing, and it’s easy to see why. The city offers an expansive high-speed fiber network, a supportive community and plenty of local talent.
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Fast Connectivity
For Chris Rader, owner of RADER, the high-speed fiber network was a huge draw for creating a headquarters for his IT company in Lafayette in 1998. He grew up in nearby New Iberia, and after bouncing between Houston and Louisiana post-grad, he and his family settled into Lafayette 25 years ago.
“Lafayette is home,” he says. “When we moved back, the fiber loop was being installed and fiber was being brought directly into businesses and homes. It’s one of the reasons why our business has been successful; having a solid connection early on gave our company a competitive advantage.”
Though it was an important perk, Rader says fiber isn’t what brought him back to Lafayette.
“We didn’t come here for the fiber, we came here for the culture,” he says.
Plus, he had access to resources — like Lafayette’s Opportunity Machine (OM), which provides business education, guidance and risk reduction to startup founders and small-business owners.
“We were the first company in the OM incubator program in 2011,” he says. “We joined because we wanted office space in the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise Center. Then, we began managing IT for the whole building.”
Today, the company occupies the former Piccadilly building, and Rader is hopeful the surrounding area will become a new tech hub for Lafayette.
“We love living in Lafayette, even though we can live anywhere in the country, because we work remotely. Lots of tech companies have come here, and we hope there are more like ours that can grow and develop and provide more opportunities for jobs,” he says.
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Ben Johnson, founder and CEO of Techneaux, grew up just a few minutes outside of downtown Lafayette in Scott, attending the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, then Texas A&M. Being closer to family brought him back to Lafayette, where he started his now-successful tech consultancy out of his garage with his father in 2010.
“Lafayette is a small community, and you get to know a lot of people,” he says. “Having worked in the tech world, I saw friends move out of Lafayette and Louisiana to get tech jobs, and I thought, ‘Why don’t we just start a company here?’ At the time, we just wanted to help grow the community, and the type of work we were doing — and working remotely — meant we didn’t have to be local to a major tech center.”
Techneaux grew rapidly, upsizing its office several times since its first space in downtown Lafayette, and Johnson took advantage of the resources available to him by the city.
“We’ve utilized the support of Louisiana Economic Development and the Lafayette Economic Development Authority,” he says. “They offer great plans for businesses to bridge the gap between stages of growth. We’ve used several programs like the CEO Roundtables, Economic Gardening Initiative and the Quality Jobs program. Just the availability they’ve always shown is great.”
Johnson also notes that UL Lafayette graduates often become high-quality Techneaux employees.
“UL graduates are excellent students with a high sense of work ethic that we haven’t found in other places,” he says. “The culture in Lafayette leads toward people having the right aptitude and attitude for learning how to learn and adapt. We’ve had a lot of success with hiring here.”
University Perks
Technology isn’t limited to just information and computers in Lafayette. It extends to virtually every industry in the area, from health care to biotechnology. Much of that technology — and those providing, installing and operating it — is the result of the work being done at UL Lafayette.
UL Lafayette was the first university in the country to offer a master’s degree in computer science. Since then, it’s made incredible strides in the world of technology, from its research to the commendable workforce it churns out year after year. Recently, it achieved the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education’s elite R1 designation, a big deal for research schools.
“The university is constantly evolving, learning and educating as we learn,” says Dr. Ramesh Kolluru, vice president for research, innovation and economic development. “We have a very strong, robust program in computer science, and we have a strong commitment to growing and meeting the needs of the industry.”
Kolluru partially credits this to keeping the industry curricula up to date and innovating what’s taught — and how it’s taught — to produce a successful workforce.
“We are training the workforce for these companies so that when students graduate having done capstones or internships, they’re ready to walk into the company on day one having been oriented with the corporate culture to be productive members of those companies,” he says.
Additionally, Kolluru says the collaborative nature of Lafayette’s tech community comes naturally.
“This is a community that embraces you,” he says. “Technology workers really need that because they come from different cultures and walks of life. Lafayette does a really good job of making them feel at home.”
Spirit of Investment
CGI, which is among the largest IT and business consulting services firms in the world, is known for its growth goals. Founded in 1976, the company began operating in Lafayette in 2014, and between 2014 and 2018, it added 400 jobs in the area, refreshing that goal to 800 once the former was met.
William LaBar, CGI’s vice president of consulting services, has worked for CGI for 25 years and says watching the growth is rewarding, especially with the company’s access to Lafayette talent.
“Anytime we’re looking to grow, we need to know we can find creative people, leaders and people who know the tech or can pick it up,” he says.
In addition to a business ecosystem that helps inform companies on how to build their teams, Lafayette offers something else that simply can’t be beat: a standout quality of life.
“That’s one of the reasons we picked this location,” LaBar says. “The quality of life that Lafayette has to offer is one of the most unique and culturally rich places you can live in the U.S.”
He further notes that the city is an ideal size, and it offers a diverse food scene and plenty of live music.
As for the high-speed internet, LaBar says that was a positive factor for choosing Lafayette, but he sees it for more than just that.
“The infrastructure is part of it, but the cool thing about LUS Fiber (the municipally owned subsidiary of Lafayette Utilities System) is that it was a decision the community made to invest in itself,” LaBar says. “That spirit of investment carries over into many other parts of Lafayette.”
This article was sponsored by the Lafayette Convention & Visitors Commission, Lafayette Economic Development Authority and One Acadiana.
