Hot security startup Duo Security opens office in Downtown Detroit

Duo Security is opening a new office in Downtown Detroit, expanding from its headquarters in Ann Arbor, Michigan. The company will immediately relocate 30 team members to a shared space in Bamboo Detroit in the Madison Building and by the end of the year, plans on moving into a 9,000 square foot space to accommodate additional employees.

This is a big win for Detroit.

Duo Security is one of the hottest security startups in the space and arguably one of the largest in the state of Michigan. The company raised a $70 million series D in late October 2017, placing its valuation north of a billion. Duo employees 350 people in Ann Arbor, Michigan and an additional 250 in other offices around the world. Through it all Duo has remanded loyal to Ann Arbor but the talent and excitement in Detroit is impossible to ignore.

“Metro Detroit has more engineers per capita than any region in the US next to Silicon Valley,” CEO and co-founder Dug Song tells TechCrunch. “And while our college town of Ann Arbor is a cornerstone of innovation in the region, the urban area of Detroit is nearly 4 million people strong. Jon Oberheide and I have been eager for Duo to help play a role in the city’s growing momentum and support ongoing efforts to bolster the region’s technology profile.”

Dug tells me that the company picked Bamboo to house the first Duo employees as a move back to the company’s roots. Duo was founded in a coworking space and the company is ready to help build a the platform for the city.

Duo is moving into the Madison Building, which is one of the pillars of the startups community in Detroit. It was one of the first buildings real estate mogul Dan Gilbert purchased when moving Quicken Loans to downtown Detroit. It was quickly retrofitted in 2011 and has since houses numerous Gilbert-backed venture firms, accelerators and startups including offices for Twitter and others.