Health care business leaves Albuquerque for Denver: a look behind the headline

A recent Albuquerque Journal story highlighted a startup cardiac health firm named Karoo that was founded in Albuquerque that is leaving for Denver.

The company’s co-founder and CEO Ian Koons says it’s outgrown its New Mexico roots.

“You can’t build a full-sized business here in terms of the talent,” Koons said. He said it was hard to convince young professionals to stay in Albuquerque, where concerns about crime and school quality could deter them from settling in.

RGF and others have argued that the Legislature and local governments need to take bold steps to improve both crime and the schools and it is not hard to understand why a company would leave the area for those reasons.

But, it is worth noting that Koons said “economic development incentives have been heavily concentrated around the quantum computing industry in New Mexico, reducing the pool of funding and support available to health and biotechnology firms. He told the Denver Business Journal that Karoo did not seek relocation incentives from officials in Colorado.”

The critical issues are as follows:

1) MLG and New Mexico politicians more generally are simply unwilling to provide broad based economic reforms (like eliminating the income tax or GRT reform to name just two) that can easily be afforded by a state flush with cash as New Mexico. Instead, politicians continue to pick particular industries that THEY like (film being another) and pump money into them.

2) IF New Mexico were more broadly business friendly it might have more success in attracting talent (not to mention improving crime and the education system), but that is explicitly NOT a policy concern of the Legislature. 

3) While this is one prominent business that is willing to speak out, there are dozens of other businesses that don’t look at New Mexico in the first place or move quietly without saying anything or they are simply too small at a given point to notice. Those decisions make New Mexico economically dependent on government and oil and gas and hinder growth and diversification.