BLAINE, Minn. – (Oct. 22, 2015) – Infinite Campus manages educational data for 7.5 million students across 45 different states. The 22 year old company had humble beginnings managing student data in the Centennial School District and being headquartered in their district office. The company continued to grow and in 2008 moved into its current location in Blaine.
“We moved in with about 130 people, and since then, that was 2008, in the last 7 years, we’ve continued to grow, and in the building currently we have 400 people and it’s designed to house about 450 and we’re going to hit that next summer,” said Kratsch, the CEO and Founder of Infinite Campus.
As Infinite Campus quickly fills their 110,000 square foot building – a decision was made to embark on an expansion plan that will allow the business to continue to grow.
Kratsch summarized their plans, “We’re going to double our square footage. Currently we have about 110,00 square feet in the facility, we’re going to double that. We’re adding another 100,000 square feet in a 9-story office tower just to the north of the building and that will allow us to grow and add another 450 people so doubling our staff eventually to about 900 on this site.”
The 9-story tower will be the tallest in the north metro. Staying in the north metro area was important to Charlie who was born and raised in the community.
“The kind of conventional school wisdom is if you’re kind of a high tech company, you move down to Eden Prairie or Edina, areas like that. It’s important for us to stay on the north side. We have a high tech, high wage work force, our average salary is in the high $80,000s and that’s important. Also in this area, having grown up in the Blaine area, this is really a bunch of metal shops, sod fields, so it’s really important to me to have a high tech firm on the north side of the Twin Cities. We’ve seen, since we moved to this area, seven years ago, a large percentage of our employees move from other area of the twin cities to the Blaine area.”
Infinite Campus is surrounded by wetlands and is bordered to the north by Lochness Park. With the park being so close to their buildings some residents have been concerned about the impact of Infinite Campus on the natural habitat. Charlie has sought out ways for his company to partner with the city to improve the park for all who use it.
“The south end of the park we’re going to renovate and working with the city park group. We took out a lot of the invasive species that were in there, and we’ll be replanting natural trees like Oaks and Pines and Maples and really make a nice impression on the south end. It’s been a great partnership.”
Also of importance to Charlie was keeping his growing team together. “The metaphor for this office is the Starship Enterprise. We really view that we’re kind of on a ship together all for a common purpose and keeping everybody on this site, not splitting in other areas of the metro was important. And, that really led to the extended metaphor which is the tower is inspired by the NASA vehicle assembly building down in Cape Canaveral, Florida. So the idea is, the Infinite Campus Spaceship, the U.S.S. Enterprise we call it is pulling into the space dock with this tower being that space station and we have a 10,000 foot connector between the two of them. So, everybody working together and also keeping the goofball space theme going.”
With competition from national high tech companies such as Google and Twitter – Charlie has worked to build a working environment that keeps employees both productive and happy. “What we have here is an open work environment, very few walls. All of our workers are members of teams usually about 3-5 people per team and those teams working on various projects. The culture that we embrace here is one of hard work, obviously, but also of enjoying your job and enjoying your environment. So, we always have something going on whether it’s our 36 foot rock climbing wall we have in the office, we have open rock climbs a couple times a week, it’s the environment of things like our Koi pond and other things we have in here that are very kind of serene.”
Designing a company that gives students, teachers, parents and administrators each different tools to enhance the educational experience it part of the mission of Infinite Campus and Charlie has seen that play out in ways that he never thought possible when he started working on this more than two decades ago.
Kratsch concluded, “I’ve got a picture of a guy serving in Iraq sitting on top of a tank with his smart phone going through his student’s homework, so the kid back at home in the states, watching the homework seeing that his son, didn’t hand in a paper, getting on the phone and calling his son from on top of a tank in Iraq. I mean that’s incredible, that’s the power of technology.”
The new office tower is expected to be completed by December of 2016. Charlie is already planning the grand opening ceremony for the new office tower which will include a massive fireworks display.
