RedOwl Analytics: Doing the Things that Work

This week I visited RedOwl Analytics, a homegrown Baltimore company with 25 employees that turns big data into smart solutions for other businesses and organizations. Last year, judges selected RedOwl as the best business in the IT category at Maryland’s 2013 InvestMaryland Challenge, awarding the company $100,000 to help them grow. Here in Maryland we know that early investments spur innovation and create jobs, and with the help of InvestMaryland, RedOwl hopes to double their workforce over the next few years.

Progress is a choice. Job creation is a choice. And the economy grows from the middle up and the middle out, not from the top down. That’s why, in the wake of the Great Recession, the O’Malley-Brown administration has focused on helping small businesses like RedOwl in the fight to recover all the jobs lost during the downturn. We set a goal to recover those jobs by the end of FY2014, and in April this year, we surpassed it.

The progress we’ve made, we’ve made by choosing to do the things that work; investing in education and infrastructure, and building innovative, common platforms for business success like InvestMaryland. Since May 2013, Maryland has created 22,100 jobs, with 83% (18,300) of those jobs in the private sector. And our unemployment rate is nearly 10% lower than the national average.

RedOwl Analytics is just the tip of the iceberg. The company is just one of the growing businesses in Maryland that has led the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to name Maryland #1 in the nation for entrepreneurship and innovation for three consecutive years and #1 in the nation for STEM jobs.

And even though we’ve surpassed our goal to restore jobs lost, we must continue to invest in the things that work as we look to the future. Together, we will build a stronger One Maryland.

Click here to view a video of Governor O’Malley’s visit to RedOwl Analytics.