Tenable’s recent initial public offering brought a lot of attention — and dollars — to the Columbia area. But it’s not as though the Howard County began when the opening bell of the NASDAQ rang on July 26, 2018.
For one, the company itself is 16 years old. And it’s part of a broader community of startups, fed by talent from universities and government brain centers like the National Security Agency and Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab, and buoyed by an East Coast location with equal proximity to D.C. and Baltimore.
For its part, the Columbia area has a rich startup history that’s brought big players to the area. In 2013, Cisco bought network security firm Sourcefire for $2.7 billion. Oracle entered the area the next year with a $5.3 billion deal to buy point-of-sale pioneer and “39-year overnight success” Micros Systems. When it comes to helping entrepreneurs, the area has the Howard County–backed Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship and state-created TEDCO, which have long provided funding and resources. More recently, the cyber-focused startup studio DataTribe brought Silicon Valley business chops to Maple Lawn, and the area gained a chapter of Startup Grind.
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