San Jose tech startup Tripshot opens new office in Phoenix

Yet another tech startup is expanding to Phoenix: Tripshot, a growing tech startup headquartered in Central California, is expanding to Arizona with the recent opening of its new Downtown Phoenix office.

The San-Jose based company provides comprehensive transportation fleet management software to approximately one hundred clients, particularly private transportation networks managed by businesses and other organizations. Their software platform not only allows riders to coordinate transportation via a smartphone app, but also allows fleet managers and vehicle operators to view real-time location and scheduling information for their vehicles.

The company already runs secondary offices in Oregon and Washington, but according to Rob Antoniak, Vice President of Business Development & Strategy at Tripshot–and former COO of Valley Metro–expanding to Phoenix was an easy decision for the company.

“Strategically for the company, it makes a lot of sense to have a footprint here in Phoenix,” Antoniak said.

One major reason Tripshot expanded to Phoenix was to pursue new partnerships in public transportation, non-emergency medical transportation, and paratransit service providers.

“There’s a pretty robust network of those providers here in the Phoenix area,” Antoniak said. “We’ll hope to use the Phoenix area as somewhat of a proving ground of our technology with potential clients that are right here under our nose.”

But the potential to jump into new markets wasn’t the only factor behind Tripshot’s decision to expand to the Valley, Antoniak said. Compared to Silicon Valley, the lower cost of doing business in Phoenix was significantly appealing to the company.

“A company of a modern era gets to be sort of picky,” Antoniak said. “Phoenix is obviously, from a cost standpoint, a very cost-effective, competitive landscape for any technology company.”

He also cited Phoenix as being a hub for innovation in the transportation industry, evidenced by the partnership between Valley Metro and Waymo—something Antoniak helped “seal the deal” on during his time with Valley Metro.

While Tripshot currently has approximately thirty employees, Antoniak says the company has grown between roughly two hundred and three hundred percent year-over-year for the last few years, and has been profitable without depending on any sort of venture capital funding. That sort of growth led Tripshot to consider factors like the availability of talent when exploring an office in Phoenix. That’s a factor that seems to have attracted other tech companies to Phoenix as well, Antoniak noted.

“Many of the skill sets that will be required to grow any type of technology company are coming right out of all of the university institutions that are around us here in the Valley,” he said. “I think we’re growing a lot of good talent.”

Ultimately, Antoniak expressed optimism towards Tripshot’s future business prospects in Phoenix.

“This is a good place to be testing things,” he said. “It’s a good place to be seeing what we can do to grow.”