Ursus

Ursus

• Rank: 3
• Headquarters: Reno, Nevada
• Top staffing segment(s) served: IT
• 2020 US staffing revenue: $20.4 million
• Compound annual growth rate: 60.9%
• Website: www.ursusinc.com

Ursus, a virtually headquartered firm that is incorporated in Reno, Nevada, was set up digitally before much of the US workforce took to remote work amid Covid health concerns. It was “a virtual company before it was cool to be virtual,” says Jon Beck, CEO. He took the technology and creative services company remote soon after its founding in 2015 in response to challenges with finding good talent in the San Francisco Bay Area.

“It’s fiercely competitive for all jobs in the Bay Area, and we tried the offshore model a handful of times, and not successfully,” Beck says. “Taking the company remote allowed us to hire people in other parts of the country that we probably would not have thought of before, like Birmingham, Alabama, and the Carolinas. Really quality talent that we were not thinking about because we were a West Coast-focused company. We continued that model, and when Covid hit and people were scrambling, picking up desktop computers to take home, we just kept rolling and will continue to do that.”

While 100% of Ursus employees are remote, they do meet quarterly as a team either in its Silicon Valley-based office in Morgan Hill, California, or elsewhere, such as San Diego.

Beck values face time both pre-Covid and now, but he emphasizes that the remote model proves out. “It gives people more time in their day and better work-life balance, and a happier employee is typically a more productive employee,” he says. “So, it has worked really well for us.”

That’s not all that has worked well for the company that specializes in staffing in the digital transformation market. “Covid really accelerated the digital transformation effort that has been ongoing for the last decade, and will continue for the foreseeable future,” Beck says. “We think it accelerated because companies that had not yet begun their journey now all of a sudden had to react as a result of Covid, whether they were responding to the work-from home environment, or having to sell or transact differently online.” All those lead to the need for talent.

Beck is also proud of the quality the company delivers but even more proud of the culture his team has built. He notes that it can become a challenge continuing to hold on to values, culture and process, “our way of doing things,” as the remote-only company
gets larger.

“We are trying to stay relevant and not just do things in staffing the way that they have been done, just because,” Beck says. “If there is a better way that is going to improve the quality of interaction and experience for our contractors and clients and make it more efficient, we are going to do it.”