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Connect First CEO and co-founder Geoff Mina had a vision in 2004 for a new approach to call center technology. His dependable, cost-effective cloud-based contact center solutions found traction almost immediately, allowing the company to be profitable every quarter since founding. At first, Mina’s Boulder-based team of four (including two co-founders) worked with re-sellers to get their systems and networks into the hands of a growing customer base of contact centers, non-profits and political organizations.
Mina, while working for a large telecommunications company, had come up with a way to better serve a call center client base, through a customer-centric business philosophy. Cloud capabilities meant that Connect First customers could avoid purchasing expensive software and hardware and would not need to hire the IT personnel to maintain it. The types and combinations of features Connect First can offer its clients match those of on-premises systems that require large investments, and do it in a fast, flexible way that cloud-based SaaS enables.
The key was a robust, reliable software platform that suffered almost no downtime. The core team was really good at the technology and had built the business through re-sellers.
That small, slow-growth model worked well and proved profitable for several years. Then Mina realized it was time to find some help to keep building the business. At the end of 2011, he turned to Dan Candee, hiring the experienced strategic developer as COO to lead the organization’s marketing, strategic direction and day-to-day operations.
“When I came on we had recently begun direct sales and marketing, and no real presence in the marketplace,” Candee said. “Last year, we doubled headcount, added our 35th employee - and are now on track to do more than that.”
He said a key part of that was to create an infrastructure to support nearly twice as many clients as they were serving. Having seen others emphasize marketing and sales too quickly, only to then find that the support was not there for newly acquired customers, he was determined to take a different approach.
“The foundation of our business is supporting our clients,” Candee said. “We needed to build out our customer support team. We’re 24/7 and Boulder-based, while many of our competitors are overseas and offer less support.”
Connect First’s account services team provides customer support in what Candee describes as a high-care, high-touch way: “Which is an expensive way of doing business, but we chose to grow our reputation around incredible customer service.”
The company’s other focus was to add to its development team, to ensure the organization kept innovating and improving its technology.
“I took over the sales organization, combined the marketing and sales team,” Candee said. “We leveraged our new technology to bring in some new clients - and that put us in a great place for revenue growth.”
Today, Connect First counts World Wildlife Fund, Carnival Cruise lines, ASPCA, Wounded Warrior Project and State Farm Insurance among its client base. It has remained profitable for every quarter since its founding.
One of the leadership team’s biggest points of pride though is being 100 percent bootstrapped, debt-free and investor-free: “That is important. We’re independent, agile and able to move to where our customers are moving as the industry changes.”
Management is also particularly proud of the company’s Connect First Foundation, which matches all the donations its employees make to their favorite charities up to $1,000 per year. Employees are also given paid time to spend volunteering. The company is also involved in the Colorado Technology Association and the Boulder IQ Awards, and was recognized with a 2013 Apex Award.
“We do a lot of local stuff: we’re really sort of a stereotypical Boulder firm,” Candee said. “We love our dogs and bikes, we work hard and we play hard.”
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