During the last six months a Wollongong software company that helps clients around the world work smarter has doubled the size of its team and is looking for more space in the city centre.
Walk through the lower mall and you may not even realise the growing Easy Agile team occupy the second floor of some older commercial space they have completely refitted.
As they outgrow that site what they have created is a workspace legacy ideal for the next in a steady stream of emerging startups attracted to a city with a growing reputation for being an ideal place to start, establish and grow such a business.
Startups such as Easy Agile are the reason why many behind the city's new Economic Development Strategy are confident the city can grow 10,000 new jobs in the next 10 years.
Easy Agile co-founder Nick Muldoon said Wollongong had the advantage of being affordable with a brilliant lifestyle.
So much so that many of the Easy Agile team live and work in the city centre while providing products for more than 2000 customers around the globe.
Easy Agile's clients in Western Europe and North America include Lego, Audi, BMW, IBM, Twitter, Nike and Bloomberg.
Mr Muldoon and his business partner Dave Elkan see being located in Wollongong as a key to not only their own success but many others like them.
And they are keen to keep making it attractive for local graduates from the University of Wollongong to stay in the Illawarra and not have to commute.
As well as attract other talented people from around Australia and the world to live and work in what they see as the perfect environment that provides everything they could need.
The added advantage of being located in what is fast emerging as a more trendy cosmopolitan city it the many great eateries, bars and leisure activities within walking distance of everything.
"We pay Sydney wages and 12 per cent Super, enabling our team to pay off their (lower) mortgages faster and send their kids to the school of their choice," Mr Muldoon said.
"We've removed a daily trudge commute to Sydney and replaced it with a short walk or bicycle ride to the office".
Prior to moving to Wollongong to start growing their new business at iAccelerate Mr Muldoon and Mr Elkan, originally of Sydney, worked for Australian software company Atlassian.
"Atlassian relocated us Silicon Valley and in 2016. But after a few years abroad, we decided to return to Australia and try our hands at something different," Mr Muldoon said.
"To learn something new we decided to build a business that sells software around the world. Having worked in a country with no social safety net it is really cool to be building a company in Australia".
Mr Elkan said it was particularly good to be doing it in Wollongong where they kept finding more stories like their own.
He and Mr Muldoon can definitely see the IT sector and startup community providing hundreds if not thousands more jobs in the very near future.
They have created a bootstrapped and highly profitable software company in the heart of Wollongong CBD.
And as more companies like them tell their stories it will give the city the chance to achieve a recently set goal of creating 10,000 more jobs in the next decade.
Mr Muldoon said companies such as Easy Agile were good examples of what Wollongong City Council is aiming to encourage with its Economic Development Strategy 2029.
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Greg Ellis
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
Almost four decades in electronic, print and digital media. A writer, presenter, emcee, photographer and videographer with degrees in business management, marketing and human resources and tertiary qualifications in photography.
