Josh Stearns, Mike Stearns, Sr., Gov. Rick Perry, Mike J. Stearns
This morning we had a unique opportunity to chat with Texas Governor, Rick Perry, at the Construction Expo where we are participating as exhibitors. Prior to his speech for the Proclamation Ceremony, Gov. Perry spent about ten minutes with us backstage, discussing the pros and cons about living and working in California as opposed to living and working in Texas. We shared the AccuBuild Construction Software story with him and he was genuinely happy to hear it.
Not too long ago, we decided to move AccuBuild’s headquarters to Austin, TX instead of Ontario, CA. We felt the tech industry was thriving in Austin and the opportunities for growth were much bigger. As a family-owned business, that meant our entire family packed up and headed to Texas.
Josh Stearns and Mike Stearns, Sr. discuss business with Governor Rick Perry
During his speech to a large, attentive audience, he mentioned the AccuBuild story by discussing the popularity of “reverse migration” which he described as people moving their families and businesses from CA to TX. Gov. Perry joked that 20% of Americans have relocated to Texas and it isn’t just for the great BBQ, live music and cold beer.
“People aren’t moving to Texas by accident,” he said. “In 2008, only ten states created jobs and Texas created 60% of those jobs. The innovative business climate in Texas is powerful,” he added. He discussed how Austin is managing to thrive even in the struggling economy and used our “1 out of 961 homes in foreclosure” stats as an example.
It is obvious that Gov. Perry is genuinely proud of Texas for making good business decisions and keeping taxes low. Our favorite part of the speech was when he talked about the budget surplus and joked, “they don’t even know what that means in California!”
One of the reasons we moved AccuBuild headquarters to Austin, was because we felt it was a cutting-edge city in terms of responsible growth - a mecca for construction.
