[ibimage==32142==Large==none==self==ibimage_align-left]
The AppliedTrust team at the Human Society of Boulder Valley Walk-a-Thon
Trent Hein has to be good at dealing with crying clients. As the co-founder of AppliedTrust, an IT infrastructure service company, he meets too many clients during times of crisis.
With his team of 28 engineers (plus a couple non-engineering staff), Hein works to fix problems like security breaches or website issues and build better systems that can withstand future attacks. “People can get really upset. We’ll help them through that incident and then oftentimes they become long-term clients,” said Hein.
Working with clients during times of high-stress might be a specialty of Hein’s, but it isn’t his end goal. “We’d much rather do the proactive side of that, but of course we do the incident response as well,” said Hein.
Bootstrapping Success
AppliedTrust has been around for over a decade, but still occupies a unique part of the market. “I think there’s an amazing niche right now in IT infrastructure services. We define that as security, performance and availability. There are very few companies nationwide that consult specifically in that space that are vendor neutral,” said Hein.
Being vendor-neutral lends AppliedTrusts’ engineers a sense of credibility. And engineers aren’t sequestered away from clients, they deal directly with them. New engineers are paired with senior engineers to learn not only how to fix some of the problems their clients run into, but to learn how to interact with clients and how to learn about their business needs.
As a bootstrapped company, Hein finds it difficult to garner as much media attention as those who go out and get funding. “The media especially likes to write about all the big venture capital deals, but somehow aren’t as interested in companies that have built their company with the sweat off their back,” said Hein.
But it’s clear that bootstrapping has been the right decision for the company. “We grow at 9-15 percent a year, and while that’s not a big number, we do it every year,” said Hein.
Visibility seems like less of an issue now. “When you look at some of these huge breaches, like Home Depot and Target and Staples in the last year, those are companies that should have had their finger on the pulse of their information security and they just didn’t,” Hein said. “With those super-high profile folks, now a lot of other folks are waking up and thinking wow, I wonder what we do for information security or credit card handling and that type of things and of course, that’s right in our sweet spot.”
But that’s changing. More customers – from mom and pop shops to Fortune 500 companies – are reaching out to AppliedTrust and getting their security in order.
The downtown Boulder company is looking for more engineers to join its team. Hein said the company is a completely open book to its employees – from financials to salaries – and has a flat management structure that encourages openness, innovation and creativity.
Have a tip for us or know of a company that deserves coverage? Email us via [email protected]
