A couple years ago, Simple Thread founders Al Tenhundfeld and Justin Etheredge saw an opportunity to grow their software consulting firm by putting an emphasis on user experience and design. Ultimately, that resulted in 166% growth over the last three years and a ranking of No. 3,208 on the Inc. 5000 list charting the country’s fastest-growing private companies.
The two founded the company in 2010. Both had backgrounds in software engineering and started working as independent software consultants. They worked with other consulting companies and small clients and said they built a nice portfolio.
Etheridge said the evolution to be more design- and user experience-oriented was gradual. As they did more work, they saw many of the challenges development teams faced. Often, a customer had a vision for an application but had no data. The partners conducted early user research on their own. They would talk with stakeholders and incorporate the research into the design. The partners quickly realized that they needed more expertise. Simple Tread hired its first employee in 2016.
“We decided that we really needed to get more serious in the user experience space,” Etheredge said. “We hired our first dedicated user experience team member and really just went headfirst into that. And that's kind of what led us to where we are now. We have a team of about seven user experience designers, researchers that we lean on to do a lot of that upfront kind of user research.”
The company now has 32 employees and operates virtually. Simple Thread has an office in the Gather coworking space in Richmond, but employees work from home. Most are in Richmond, but some are scattered across the country. Etheredge said they bring the team together for events regularly. He declined to disclose the company's annual revenue.
When Simple Thread starts a new project, a team of user experience experts will interview the client and people who would be using the application. The investigative work helps the team map out the project and build around the user. They can plan features and wireframes based on the research.
Besides the technical aspect, Etheredge said employees at Simple Thread actually enjoy interacting with people — perhaps an oddity in the field. They are not stereotypical software engineers that just want to be left alone to write code. That gives them an advantage over other software consulting companies.
“By the time we get to the end of that process, we have this very clear picture of where we're going next and where the engineering is going to be applied and how we're going to proceed toward an experience,” Etheredge said.
Most of the Simple Thread’s work comes from return clients or referrals from clients. Etheredge said there’s a dedicated staffer that does some business development and lead generation, but that the vast majority of the new work comes from referrals.
Etheredge said likes the company’s current path, and that he and Tenhundfeld do not foresee any major changes in direction. They want to continue to grow at a steady pace and produce quality software. They have no plans to have a large office space and are comfortable working as a virtual organization.
“Al and I really found where we shined the most was really building out what we call now digital products,” Etheredge said. “They are customer-, employee-, consumer-facing applications where there is a lot of really complex business workflow or knowledge where we have to actually sit down and talk with stakeholders, talk with users, understand their existing workflows, understand how we can move these workflows into software.”