By Camas Frank

San Luis Obispo based software company Mindbody is getting bigger. Native to SLO they already have branch offices in New York, Britain and Australia. Literally a worldwide company, they’ve built a home just inside the city limits of SLO. You might have noticed the shiny new building and traffic signal that went in on Tank Farm Road near Broad Street.
Although the new headquarters is LEED certified and suitably imposing for a modern structure, from the outside its actually rather modest for an operation that employs 900 people at the headquarters and has approximately 42,000 small business customers relying on their product.
The courtyard of the new building was packed with the employees and of course, City and County leaders for the grand opening. The local officials, including SLO  Mayor Jan Marx and County Supervisor Adam Hill, wanted not only a chance to see the tech success story for themselves but also to associate that type of growth with the vision of growth along the Broad and Tank Farm corridors.
The traffic infrastructure designed by the City around Mindbody and the nearby SESLOC Credit Union headquarters are intended to link up with other similar projects on the adjacent lots.
As Mindbody grows, CEO Rick Stollmeyer, who still owns 11 percent of the company, says he’s mindful of its place in the community.
“Living and working here is a privilege, we know that,” he sad. “if we’re not mindful of how we grow then there will blow back from residents against tech as in the Bay Area, but what we see here today is a win-win. Its a town for raising kids and keeping a community vibrant.”
There is room for about 200 more employees in the SLO headquarters, after that, Stollmeyer says, and future growth will be to provide closer to home space for employees that commute from Atascadero and Santa Maria.
A former Navy man, Stollmeyer learned the corporate ropes in the 1990’s with companies making their profits off of rocket science at Vandenberg.
Not nearly as much fun as it sounds he added he became aware of losing the sense of purpose in corporate culture of the time, approaching burnout.
“I didn’t want o spend all my time planning for retirement,” he said, “Don’t get me wrong. People do that and do good work. There’s nothing wrong with them, its just not for me.”
So in 1998 he found a niche that was for him, helping entrepreneurs in the nascent health and wellness marketplace to run the part of the business that they were not expert in. Servicing satellites it turns out is a lot like any other company. System design is a key component.
By 2001 Mindbody was one of many “dot-com” companies run out of a garage with hopes and dreams, but over time, Stollmeyer says, they’ve benefited as the Central Coast approaches a “critical mass” of intellectual capital. As each start-up comes along with a few Cal Poly students on their team looking to build an idea, the environment improves for the Mindbodys and iFixits that are already established.
The model has worked so well that shortly after the ground opening, and Stollmeyer’s interview with the SLO City News, Mindbody filed its IPO statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Both the headquarters and IPO were years in development as the company continues to look for investment for a profitable future.
While they’ve been growing in income and employees, its still hard to make a profit, and getting to nest still more carful planning.
Most of the financial risk at the moment is being taken by a myriad of larger investors. Bessemer Venture Partners, incidentally involved in the IPOs of both LinkedIn and Yelp, owns just over 20 percent of Mindbody. Catalyst Investors owns 15 percent and  J.P. Morgan, W Capital Partners and Ventura Partners XIII each own about 10 percent.