How these 2 best friends built Seattle's DevHub into a 'boutique' tech company

Mark Michael and Daniel Rust walk to work every day. They stop by the Herkimer Coffee in the lobby of their office building, Fourth & Blanchard in Belltown, where Michael gets a drip coffee and Rust gets a tall iced double-shot vanilla latte.

The pair then head upstairs to their 10th-floor office, where they run their 16-year-old tech company DevHub, which helps consumer brands such as Nike and Saks Fifth Avenue mass-produce and host websites. It’s a labor of love for the two best friends.

“Daniel lets me be CEO. He’s the only one who can fire me,” Michael said.

Michael, the company’s president, and Rust, the chief technology officer, met in high school and have been working together ever since. After experiencing the ups and downs of the tech world, the two are focused on slow, steady growth rather than a meteoric rise.

“Every dollar that we make we put back in to new employees or more into marketing. It’s a slow growth,” Rust said. “It’s not astronomical growth.”

It wasn’t always this way for DevHub. When the company was just a couple of years old, it tried the fast-growth model, raising “a couple million,” as Michael puts it, and hiring a large team of engineers. The team spent late nights getting the technology ready and gaining press for its product launch. Michael and Rust expanded the office and even got a game room to attract employees.

When the product launched, however, nothing happened. Michael said it crushed his belief that building a good product alone will attract customers. Nobody used the game room — people hardly moved from their desks. The money was gone in six months. 

DevHub decided to take a different approach. The company moved into a smaller office in the same Belltown building. Michael, Rust and a smaller team continued developing the technology but also prioritized marketing. DevHub began selling through partners that would offer DevHub as an additional service. 

Now, the company operates as what Michael calls “a boutique hotel” rather than a big chain. DevHub has a little over 20 full-time employees and roughly 15 contractors. In 2021, DevHub acquired the New York City-based retail tech company Brickwork Software. Rather than go mostly through partners, DevHub is now trying to sell directly to brands.

The company now counts more than 260 clients.

Michael and Rust said they always share the same big-picture goals for the company, even if they disagree on the small things occasionally. The two have lived in Belltown since moving to Seattle after growing up in Richland and attending Central Washington University. Their apartment doors were right next to each other for a while. Their wives work together in real estate. Michael knows Rust’s order when the two go out to celebrate at Assaggio a block away from their office: osso buco or carbonara. Michael gets the gnocchi or the bolognese. They both enjoy tequila. 

Their leadership styles, however, differ greatly. Rust’s calm, quiet demeanor balances Michael’s enthusiasm and manic energy. Michael, who is focused more on sales and human resources, is trying to organize a concert with hip-hop artists Juvenile and Mannie Fresh at El Gaucho after hearing the duo’s Tiny Desk concert on NPR. He initially wanted to do it at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley, but the venue was booked well into 2024.

Rust, meanwhile, is focused more on product and engineering. He speaks roughly one sentence for every 10 of Michael’s. Once, when the two were camping at Fish Lake near Leavenworth, they played Connect 4. Michael tried to gain an advantage by dropping in two pieces for every one of Rust’s. Rust still won every game.

The office is adorned with old newspaper clippings that function as a sort of time capsule of Michael and Rust’s friendship. Multiple cutouts from the Tri-City Herald report on a previous project of the duo’s, Synapse Corporate Solutions. Under one clipping is framed an old ad in which Michael is smiling and sporting suspenders and an old Bluetooth earpiece. Rust wears a plain blue button-down and stares expressionless into the camera. An artist who goes by Solace Wonder helped paint the office, which features a painting of a tank with an orange glow surrounding it.

As DevHub continues to age, Michael and Rust are still committed to smart, modest growth. Michael feels he has grown more level-headed over the years working with Rust and no longer catastrophizes after losing out on a deal, like he used to do.

“I would lay on the ground like, ‘Daniel, we’re moving back to Tri-Cities buddy. Pack your stuff,’” Michael said. “It’s over.” 

Rust, meanwhile, would tell Michael they would figure out a way forward and that the company wasn’t dead because of one lost deal. As DevHub continues to chart its path forward, Michael and Rust are doing so knowing clients won’t find them simply because they have a product, and growth won’t come overnight.

“A really good product comes a year or two after you’ve launched it,” Rust said.

“Or 16 years,” Michael added.