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SpireMedia’s ability to adapt and innovate has made it the success it is today, emerging as one of the most innovative digital developers in the industry. As Nick Coppolo, Director of Product Development, puts it, “For a tech company, we’re geriatric. 16 years? That’s old.” They may be a bit “long in the tooth”, but you wouldn’t know it from the forward thinking of this Denver-based firm.
Founder and CEO Mike Gellman was making monster movies in Midtown Manhattan when he was asked to build his first website. At the time (circa 1996), websites were somewhat of a rarity and for most people the Internet still came in the form of an AOL disc and required a landline.
This was when Gellman discovered his passion for web development. Soon after, he made his escape to Colorado where he met Jon Nordmark, founder of then-fledgling eBags enterprise. Nordmark agreed to let Gellman build their website - and from that project Spire was born. Spire rode the dot-com wave, building websites for other future Colorado success stories such as Raindance and StorageTek.
Websites were just the beginning for Mike Gellman and the SpireMedia team. Success is born out of opportunity for those with the foresight to take advantage of it. Such an opportunity came in the form of the iPhone in 2007 when AT&T had secured exclusive rights to carry the device. Mike Gellman and VP of Business Development Adam Hasemeyer said they saw a blue ocean of opportunity before them.
Spire focused on executing in the mobile space in its infancy, and succeeded in gaining AT&T’s attention. After a consistent delivery of wins, AT&T made SpireMedia an Elite Mobility Partner and it remains the only one in the Midwest. That relationship has sprouted an array of clients that AT&T handed them as enterprise projects including Rent-A-Center, Intermountain Healthcare, and the California Lottery.
This kind of established success comes with a delicate balancing act of focus and flexibility. SpireMedia knows their identity and plays to their strengths. Hasemeyer said: “We truly understand what we’re great at doing – developing digital products that produce success for our clients. We rally our team around this goal and we execute. This leads to strong relationships.”
Companies continue to turn to SpireMedia for web and mobile application development because they have a track record of injecting a culture of innovation, not just into the production process, but throughout the entire organization.
“This is something big companies find immensely valuable,” Hasemeyer said. “Conversely, startups, in the flux of constant evolution, need some control in their chaos in order to successfully get a product to market.”
Having found a balance between adaptability and invention, Spire is able to cater to both large multinational corporations as well as startups. It is this dichotomy that makes Spire unique and inspires big companies to think like startups while giving startups the focus and structure of larger companies.
Companies like Spire evolve over time, and the success they have now is a result of the careful and deliberate decisions made by Gellman and his leadership team. For startups seeking to follow Spire’s steps to success, the path is relatively straightforward albeit paved in time and sweat.
Spire actually listens to their customers, evaluating their real needs and building within that space. They approach innovation without projecting preconceived notions of what their target demographic wants. “If you listen, you learn , and when you learn you build valuable products,” Coppolo said.
Spire is secure in their identity and always plays to their strengths. Following this credo, leads to a consistent portfolio that attracts the clientele they desire. Similarly, Gellman said the Spire team is careful not to take on projects that risk obscuring that: “This is my sales strategy -- we provide value or we won’t work together. A great company is built on the clients they don’t take.”
A diverse perspective enables SpireMedia to continuously innovate for its clients, a result of Gellman and Spire’s hiring tactics. Acquiring talent to match the personality of the company means thinking a bit different when hiring. Skills can be easily taught, but the ability to seek out the all-important “why question” can’t. “It’s very hard to teach people to think creatively and challenge assumptions,” Gellman said. The SpireMedia team comes from every sort of background imaginable: classical music (Nick Coppolo), architecture, law, psychology, anthropology, fine arts, and more.
The humble beginnings of the company have never been forgotten by Gellman. From its first homegrown client to today, Gellman said he makes a conscious effort to contribute to the Colorado Tech scene’s growth: “We at Spire have a pay-it-forward type of mentality. We spend a lot of time mentoring…We love Colorado companies and they love us.”
The future looks as auspicious for SpireMedia as its origins, and they will continue to surprise with what they do next. Now their work is taking them beyond the browser and the phone. They were chosen by TomTom to design their smartwatch, a project that could lead to a whole new world of possibilities for Gellman and his team.At the same time, as Coppolo said, “Our job is product innovation. Whatever those products are, wherever they are, we’re going to work to make them work and work well.”
Matthew Sibley contributed writing to this story.
