its largest competitor, DogVacay, in 2017 and has raised a total of $156 million from leading venture capital firms. The company was born out of a Startup Weekend event in Seattle, and in 2011 Rover was named Startup of the Year by Geekwire.

I recently spoke with Megan Teepe, Rover's VP of Operations, to glean a better understanding for why Rover chose Spokane, what its Spokane team is focused on and how the company's experience has been so far.

Rover's top reasons for seeking a presence outside of Seattle was to establish geo-redundancy in the event of an outage at its headquarters, and to tap into emerging talent. The company evaluated several cities in the United States, and its key criteria were: workforce quality; labor and real estate costs; anddistance to Seattle. It was particularly important that prospective employees shared Rover's culture and values as they relate to people and pets.

Spokane won out, Teepe says, because of the caliber of talent and values of the community, as well as for its "super-compelling" real estate cost structure. She also referenced the caliber of candidates produced by Gonzaga, Whitworth, EWU and the other universities and colleges in Spokane.

Downtown was picked as a location due to its "great vibe," which Teepe says, "reminds me of Denver." She continued that downtown Spokane offers "great hotels and restaurants, a place to walk dogs by the river, a number of other new businesses and the many cool things coming.

"I love walking out Rover's doors to one of three independent coffee shops in the