Travel analytics company QL2 moves headquarters to Baltimore

As an executive, Carl Wartzack played a role in growing two of the best-known tech companies that were founded in Baltimore.
Now he’s responsible for moving an already-established company here.
Wartzack recently took over as CEO of QL2, a 15-year-old company that provides data to travel-oriented companies like airlines, hotels and rental-car companies that can be used for pricing.

Last week, the company moved into offices in Brewer’s Hill. In AOL, Wartzack has a very familiar neighbor.
Wartzack was an executive at Advertising.com, and worked there during its 2004 acquisition by AOL. He most recently worked as Senior Vice President of Global Operations at Millennial Media, which he left after seven years at the end of 2015 following that adtech company’s acquisition by AOL.
He was seeking another opportunity with a Baltimore startup. But after being introduced to the owners of QL2, he decided to take the helm of that company. With a distributed team in locations like India, Atlanta, New York and elsewhere, it didn’t have a proper headquarters. But Wartzack said the company needs one to build a culture and grow.
“As we talked about where the right place was, to me, Baltimore made sense,” he said, pointing to the city’s tech and data talent, as well as the “spirit of the business community.”
The company already has more than 200 employees, but Wartzack expects the Baltimore location to grow with new hires. He said he wants to build an office of 60-80 employees over the next several years.
At the same time, he wants to grow QL2’s offering. Along with working with travel companies on pricing, he sees an opportunity to build out advanced analytics and apply the data for pricing in e-commerce and government.
He’ll bring growth-stage experience from two companies that also expanded in Canton.
“Both of them had a dynamic culture. Both of them had a very unique value proposition to add to the marketplace,” he said of Advertising.com and Millennial Media. “The lesson I take away from the years at both of those places was understanding how important it is to have a unique value proposition that is all about growing and winning.”