A classic California venture-backed startup is growing in Ann Arbor -- because its CEO is an Ann Arbor native and has convinced the company that growing in Michigan is a great business idea.

The company has sizable plans for Ann Arbor, telling state officials it plans to create 250 jobs there over 10 years.

MyBuys offers technology to online retailers that conducts detailed technical studies of buying habits. The result is personalized product recommendations to the retailers' customers that boost sales.

"We're trying to figure out what consumers want to buy, and do that better than anybody else, and actually target consumers individually," CEO Robert Cell said in an interview with GLITR Tuesday. "We get information to make recommendations from a retailer's past transactions. We take order files and notice what products go together, how often people buy similar products, category-to-category associations, affinity to brands. We also build profiles on consumers -- who they are, what they buy, how loyal they are to brand."

The company earns revenue based on a percentage of the revenue it generates for its clients.

Cell and partners founded MyBuys in April 2006. The company is at 40 employees, six of whom are in Ann Arbor.

Why Ann Arbor? Cell's a native. He grew up in Ann Arbor, got a bachelor's degree in engineering at Michigan and later got his MBA there.

After college, Cell worked for the accounting firms Coopers & Lybrand and Deloitte & Touche in transaction finance. He later worked for Kellogg Co., where he led corporate development and strategy -- "Helping them think outside the cereal box," he said -- and turning around and selling the Lender's Bagels brand.

He was recruited to California in 2000 by Blue Martini Software, where he worked through the bursting of the dot-com bubble. After that he established his own marketing company, AdSpace, a digital ad sign network, which he sold before founding MyBuys about two years ago.

Of the California tech community, Cell said: "There is difficulty in recruiting talented people in Silicon Valley. The salaries are crazy, and the attitude is, 'If I don't like this today I'll leave.' It's a very transient employee base. There is something about Michiganders' drive and tenacity, that I thought if you could take that, and teach them Internet commerce there is a winning solution there."

Salaries are more reasonable here, too. Said Cell: "Any time I can hire quality talent that doesn't have imputed million-plus-dollar mortgages in their salary, that's a good thing."

Cell praised Ann Arbor Spark for its assistance in finding employees, and the Michigan Economic Development Corp. for a $3.9 million, 10-year tax credit.

"Spark's been great, and that is something that was not here when I left," Cell said.

Cell said he also wants to establish a close relationship with the University of Michigan for leadership development.

"Growth rates going forward are hard to estimate... (but) I anticipate as a company to double in size each year, and a growing percentage of our employees will be in our Ann Arbor office," Cell said.

The company is now in temporary space at Spark Central. It will soon move into 3,000 square feet at One North Main, which Cell said would hold the company up to about 30 employees. "From there we have to figure out where to go," Cell said.

Cell said the company will soon be recruiting sales, marketing and software development staff for the office, with engineering recruiting expected later this year.

"We want to have an environment that's fun," he said. "We want a culture of winning, but having a good time while we're doing it."