Within the flexible world of technology, a startup with a particularly disruptive idea can, after many a month and more likely years of hard work, hit it big and become a so-called Unicorn company.
For young companies breaking into a service industry, the path to success can be a bit rougher, for its own set of reasons. Often, the successful service startups act quick to take advantage of the latest innovations within the product space, leveraging the new technologies within their own sectors.
Enter Boston-born full service interactive agency Genuine Interactive.
When Genuine Interactive was first starting out, Chris Pape, the company's co-founder and creative director, approached John Grayson about coming onto the startup as the fourth employee in 2005. Grayson, Genuine Interactive's current CEO, didn't know what to think.
"I had been a sales and marketing guy my whole life, but not in the digital realm," Grayson told BostInno.
At this point in time, however, the digital space was becoming the place to be for burgeoning startups. Though the Dot Com Bubble burst a few years prior, companies already within the space began to innovate, and then iterate, on different consumer-facing devices, requiring service providers like marketers and agencies to update their strategies. When Apple released the first version of the iPhone in 2007, Genuine Interactive had already been working for three years on ways in which to best engage customers for clients' brands within the digital domain.
Since then, the company has overseen the proliferation of smartphones and tablets, as well as other technologies, from an agency perspective. But while the timing was strong, the real secret to Genuine Interactive's success was its employees' dogged attitude and hard work, said Grayson.
"We didn't have shareholders or investors," shared Grayson, noting that the company doubled in size within its first four years, though it lacked a sales team (and still does). The then 12-person agency's revenues soared from $250,000 into the multi-millions. To keep up with the demand, Genuine Interactive sought to bring on top talent, expanding the team to about 30 employees. But the company's leadership soon realized that its processes needed tinkering, too.
"When you're growing aspects of the company, you are constantly breaking. You're continually inventing who you are and redefining the processes," admitted Grayson. "When you're a 12-person agency, the founders do everything. When you get to 30 [employees], you need to be willing to delegate and let others do some work. And when you hit between 50 and 75, the founders need to put trust in the employees and really let go."
The alignment of the Genuine Interactive team with the company's "Hungry, humble and smart" culture, originally instilled by Pape and Grayson, continues to propel forward momentum. Shared Grayson:
Chris [Pape] and I don't have bios on the site, we're not those type of people. We're not guys who are comfortable with our name on the door and with taking all the credit. We want it to be about Genuine Interactive, not about us.
We're continually looking for deep digital thinkers, and we try to make talent feel like celebrities by encouraging them to do research and development and continue to learn. We're the anti-agency. We would pick up a developer from a large ad agency, where they were treated like a black box...at Genuine, they have the ability to be heard, have a voice and make an impact.
Genuine Interactive is now pushing 100 employees from its new South End office, which holds plenty of room as the company continues to add around two people each month.
