Curalate plans move to new, smaller hub at Eight Penn Center

Come October, venture-backed visual discovery company Curalate will ditch its 10,000-square-foot 2401 Walnut offices for a smaller hub at Eight Penn Center.

“We’re excited about moving into some fresh new digs,” CEO and cofounder Apu Gupta said in an email. “The space made great sense financially while giving us a ton of flexibility around future growth.”

The leadership team made the call “several months ago,” Gupta said, to look for new space that would house the Philadelphia portion of its staff, which in February was around 110, split between Philly, Seattle, New York and London.

“2401 was the first office we rented as a company,” Gupta said. “Over the five years we were there we learned a tremendous amount about what worked well for us and what didn’t, and we used that experience to find a home that made sense for our broader team. We found a great fit at 8 Penn Center.”

The Philadelphia Business Journal, which first reported on the move on Thursday, said the company’s new location, on the 14th floor of the Center City building, is about 3,000 square feet smaller than its current Walnut Street hub.

The real estate update from Curalate comes six months after it laid off 14 staffers amid what Gupta then said was a shift among its clients: appetite for Curalate’s visual discovery platform grew the most among smaller companies.

Long thought of as one of the breakout hits in waiting of the Philly tech community, Curalate raised a $27.5 million Series C round led by NEA in 2016 and has raised $40 million total from investors like First Round Capital and MentorTech Ventures. At the time of the layoffs, the CEO told Technical.ly that 2018 could be a banner year for the company. Thus far, that’s proving true, Gupta says.

“We’ll end this quarter with more customers than ever before,” Gupta said. “Brands and retailers are waking up to the importance of leveraging social media to drive ecommerce as both social and ecommerce have become critically important to consumer businesses. Our team is executing really well and moving faster than ever, and there’s a palpable buzz in the air.”