Things clicking for Cox, Pongr one year after move to Des Moines

Zach Cox grew up in Marshalltown and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Iowa State University, so he’s no stranger to central Iowa. But when Cox moved to the Des Moines area last summer after spending several years on the East Coast and in Canada, he had to work to acclimate himself to the…

 Zach Cox, co-founder of Pongr, leads a three-man Des Moines team for the Boston-based company. Photo courtesy of Juice.

Zach Cox grew up in Marshalltown and earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Iowa State University, so he’s no stranger to central Iowa.

But when Cox moved to the Des Moines area last summer after spending several years on the East Coast and in Canada, he had to work to acclimate himself to the area’s tech startup scene.

“What I wanted to do as soon as I got back here was just try to network as much as I could,” said Cox, the co-founder and chief software architect of Pongr, an online photo-sharing platform through which users upload pictures of brands and are rewarded with prizes from those brands. “I went to a lot of the networking events like Tech Brew and DSM Startup Drinks and just tried to have coffee with as many people as I could last summer, and just get to know as many people as I could.”

One year later, it appears Cox’s decision to move home, and his efforts in the aftermath of that move, are paying dividends.

“The tech community has been really great,” Cox said. “(I’ve) met a lot of really great people, hired two really talented developers who are working with me here.”

Cox and developers Byamba Tumurkhuu and Chka Davaadorj have found their niche in the downtown Liberty Building, where they make up the Iowa contingent for Boston-based Pongr.

Cox said his choice to come back to Iowa was more a “lifestyle decision” than a business one, but the change of scenery has fit in nicely with the plans for Pongr. Prior to relocating to Ankeny with his wife and 5-year-old son, Cox, 33, lived near Toronto, which presented obstacles to the company’s expansion.

Pongr CEO Jamie Thompson echoed Cox’s sentiments about the positives that came from the move to central Iowa.

“Having an operation in Des Moines has actually been an incredibly valuable asset to us, because we’ve been able to attract and retain some really bright, motivated people and give them the opportunity to work at the startup, whereas with me and some of the other guys in Boston there’s quite a bit more competition and kind of noise,” Thompson said. “We’re really looking forward to growing the operation there while we continue to do sales and marketing here on the East Coast.”

Cox and company have enjoyed unforeseen benefits from the move. The Pongr team rents office space from BitMethod, a mobile app development firm, which has spurred mutually beneficial conversation and ideas.

“While we don’t have native mobile apps currently, that’s definitely something on our radar,” Cox said. “So it’s definitely good to be in the same office space with a bunch of experts in building a mobile app.”

In addition to mulling mobile app opportunities, Pongr is working to improve its programming interface so other companies can more easily integrate existing programs with Pongr’s platform. Pongr is also tinkering with what Cox calls “Image Pulse,” a system for monitoring Twitter for photos of brands.

“We mainly wanted to just start monitoring things and see what’s out there,” Cox said. “There’s a lot, and it’s really been just completely untapped.”

On his own time, Cox organizes a meetup group for users of Scala, a programming language used by Pongr. Cox says he’d like to see more groups and efforts to advance the startup scene in the area because, for as much as good he’s seen from central Iowa since his return, there’s still plenty more room for growth.

Not long removed from a time when he had to work overtime to get a beat on the local tech scene, Cox now makes a pretty convincing pitchman for it.

“It’s just about getting stuff done,” he said of working for a startup. “We’re not afraid to use new, cutting edge technologies, so we’re learning new exciting stuff every day. (We) get to be part of the worldwide, exciting tech startup community.”

Editor’s Note: This article also appears in this week’s issue of Juice magazine. To learn more about our partnership, see our post: “Announcing our partnership with Juice.”

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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