Cnverg is leaving for Texas

On Aug. 15, Wilmington must say goodbye to another of its up-and-coming startups.

Cnverg (née MUNI-Tech), the enterprise touchscreen startup that has been splitting time between Wilmington and Philadelphia as part of the latter’s DreamIt class, will be hitting the ol’ dusty trail: cofounders John Kirk and Rick Prieto, along with operations manager Eric Berry are moving into their very own startup house in Austin, Texas.
“It’s been coming together for the past year,” said Kirk. “DreamIt kind of extended our time here, but the goal has been Austin for a bit. We thought things might change, but they really haven’t.”
Kirk said after the epic roadtrip the team embarked on a few months ago, they got to see a lot of the country and ended up garnering more potential customers in Austin than existing customers in Philly and Wilmington.
Still, Kirk said the team hasn’t yet decided on where they’ll want to headquarter. With developer Abdus Muwwakkil now in New York, the startup will actually be in four different cities at once. Though, with the company’s leadership in Austin, it’s safe to say that’s where most of the activity will be happening.
“There’s a good case for [headquartering] in Wilmington,” said Kirk. “We proposed to the state how they could incentive softer terms with distributed remote workers to headquartering in Delaware, but it will come down to whatever makes sense at the end of the day.”
No matter what, Kirk said the startup will always remember where it came from — and they’ll still be in Wilmington, in some shape or form.
“A lot of people have said before, you can have better impact from far away,” said Kirk. “Unfortunately that seems to be the case. We plan to have a presence here and that’s not going to change.”
Overall, how is the team feeling?
“Excited, but bittersweet,” said Kirk. “It’s gonna be tough not being as actively involved in the community we care greatly about.”
Take it away, Willie.