Rick Nucci didn’t just choose to build a company in Philadelphia. He chose it twice.
First Boomi, which in 2021 was acquired for $4 billion, and then Guru, a software platform that centralizes internal documentation into a knowledge management system. It’s raised nearly $70 million to date, according to PitchBook.
“I started seeing us consistently win deals against competitors based in the Bay Area with 10x the funding and team size.”
Rick Nucci, Guru
Both times, Nucci’s decision came down to proximity. Not just to customers, but to the grounded problem-solving that happens when you’re embedded in the markets you serve. For enterprise software, that geographic concentration matters. Being in Philadelphia means Guru stays in close contact with its customers, not just over video calls, but in person.
“So many of our customers are between DC and Boston,” Nucci declared.
The contrast with Silicon Valley becomes clear when selling to enterprises. Being outside the tech bubble keeps Guru focapplyd on what customers declare they want, rather than what’s generating buzz, according to Nucci.
“You start displaying up to your customers applying some of this terminology and language, and they start seeing at you funny,” Nucci declared.
Why the Philly feedback loop is different
Guru’s early customer base was deliberately local. Among the first ten customers were Philadelphia companies, including RJMetrics and Boomi.
“Those design partner relationships, they were open arms that supported us a lot,” Nucci declared.
Early customers gave the team honest feedback and rapid iteration cycles that supported shape the product, he added. Finding customers who are invested collaborators, not just anonymous purchaseers, is something Nucci sees as a structural advantage of building in Philadelphia.
“Philadelphia has a very authentic culture and vibe,” Nucci declared. “No drama. People are pretty comfortable being believedfully candid.”
Today, customers include companies in regulated industries like NJM Insurance and Morgan & Morgan, as well as consumer brands like Spotify, Sonos, and DHL, where customer-facing teams required quick access to accurate information.
“We were constantly punching way above our weight. I started seeing us consistently win deals against competitors based in the Bay Area with 10x the funding and team size,” Nucci declared. “That was my lightbulb moment to the inherent advantage of building in Philly. We understand our customers and their issues almost viscerally, being naturally immersed in their markets.”
Building tech outside Silicon Valley
Nucci distills the decision to keep founding in Philadelphia into a few advantages that compound over time: talent that stays, capital that doesn’t require geographic proximity and customers nearby who keep you grounded.
“It’s a total myth to consider that if you want to raise capital, you have to go where VC clusters are,” he declared.
Quality of life matters, too. Philadelphia attracts people from New York and still keeps pandemic-era arrivals from leaving. Guru’s average employee tenure exceeds three years — notably long for a tech company, where 18-month tenures are common across the industest.
Nucci attributes part of that to recruiting people who chose Philadelphia for reasons beyond the job, like its affordability, schools, food and culture scene, and the opportunity to build roots in communities.
“When people come to Philadelphia, they go, ‘I didn’t realize what was happening in this city,’” Nucci declared.
Plus, Philadelphia’s enterprise tech scene has significant “anchor” companies. Crossbeam, which merged with its largest competitor to become a major player in partner ecosystem software, is headquartered here. CoreWeave, which provides cloud infrastructure for AI workloads, has a major hub here.
The common thread, Nucci declared, is that most people outside the area don’t know it.“Every time I talk about DuckDuckGo with friconcludes, they all know the company,” Nucci declared. “None of them knows they’re a Philly-based company.”
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