business

If going to work included casual dress, flexible hours, bringing your dog and playing Rock Band and gathering for beer and snacks on Friday afternoons, would you mind calling yourself a nerd?

Didn't think so. 

Neither do the 140, and counting, employees of Bloomington-based Web development firm Nerdery Interactive Labs, who enjoy these and other benefits -- breakfast bar, foosball, video games and potentially lethal doses of free-flowing caffeine, anyone?

The Nerdery provides Web development services locally and nationally to advertising agencies, design shops and clients with interactive marketing needs. Aspiring to be the source of "go-to nerds" for Web, mobile and social-media app development, the company has partnered with more than 160 advertising and marketing agencies nationwide. It manages complex projects and executes design and strategy using an alphabet soup of  development tools, including PHP, AS3, AIR and .NET.

As such perks suggest, the company goes out of its way to be as nerd-friendly as possible. The goal at the Nerdery, founded by three programmers in 2003, is to attract other programmers who like collaborating and learning from each other as they tackle seemingly impossible projects. The results have paid off, including placing sixth among small companies, those with 150 employees or fewer, in the Star Tribune's recent Top Workplaces project.

"Our mission these days is that we want to be the best place for programmers to work," said Mark Hurlbert, vice president of marketing. "[The founders] have been able to keep a culture and a line of business going where we're constantly attracting more smart people. That intelligence that we have and the people that we're attracting has kind of become a cause unto itself. It gives us this great asset ... that becomes something very valuable that we can leverage in working with a lot of different groups."

Revenue at the Nerdery hit $8.6 million last year, up from $6.5 million in 2008, putting the company on the Inc. 5000 fastest-growing companies list. The recession slowed growth from the last quarter of 2008 through much of the first half of 2009, president and co-founder Luke Bucklin said, and business has been solid since. The Nerdery is on pace to reach $14 million in sales this year. And that was before the company last week opened its Chicago office, with two-way video screens enabling staff here and there to talk technology in real time.

Nerd-focused

The Nerdery also welcomes fellow nerds for user-group meetings and for its annual Overnight Website Challenge, in which volunteer teams have donated $1 million worth of Web development services to 39 nonprofit organizations.

The nerd-focused environment has been part of the company's culture from the start, but the Nerdery Interactive Labs name is relatively new, debuting in May 2009. The name resonates with ad agencies that need interactive, social media and Web projects developed and that are driving the company's growth, communication manager Mark Malmberg said.

The company had high-tech but decidedly lower-profile work in mind when Bucklin and co-founders CFO Mike Derheim and Mike Schmidt, senior vice president of software development, launched what was then known as Sierra Bravo Corp.

The three had worked together previously building applications that integrate legacy computer systems -- those hulking pre-Internet, green-screened terminals you still see at auto parts stores and electrical or plumbing supply shops -- to the Web. "Kind of a goofy niche," Bucklin said, but one he was eager to return to after leaving the previous company and spending a couple of years in sales.

Sierra Bravo's legacy systems model also wasn't scalable, Bucklin said. It required people who knew Web development and also understood how to work with the old computer systems. "We hired all of them, and then there were five of us," he said.

The solution was to re-engineer the technology Sierra Bravo was using, so that Web developers on the front end wouldn't have to know the back-end legacy systems and so that the back-end developers didn't also have to know Web development.

'Engineering company'

What the company ended up with was a growing pool of front-end Web developers whose talents were what more and more advertising agencies needed as the Web grew more sophisticated and interactive and as social networking and mobile applications emerged as marketing tools. After identifying the new niche in 2007, the company hit its stride with agency work in 2008.

A key message to agencies is that Sierra Bravo, and now the Nerdery, is "an engineering company with a bunch of Web developers," not a Web development company with a few creatives, Bucklin said. The Nerdery wants to provide the technical expertise to execute an agency's creative work and has no interest in competing for creative work or getting into marketing consulting.

Minneapolis marketing agency Zeus Jones has used the Nerdery to help with development on projects for Nordstrom, Cheerios and other clients, said David Annis, the agency's head of production.

"They're very positive and collaborative," Annis said. "We like to work with them because that's the approach we like to take in working with our clients. They have the skill and the staff, but they're also really great to work with."

Jeff Sommers, co-owner and co-founder of Izzy's Ice Cream Cafe in St. Paul, said the Nerdery developed a number of front-end features for users of its new Flavor Up! service, which updates Izzy's website, Facebook and Twitter accounts when flavors change and sends e-mail alerts to notify customers when favorites hit the dipping cabinet.

"It still feels like magic," Sommers said of the flavor update system. "We're so excited about it. I'm all over the metro, and I can see what's happening at the shop in terms of flavors."

The expert says: P.J. Voysey, a business management and turnaround expert who formerly headed a Twin Cities-based information technology company, said he applauds the Nerdery for employing strategies that have worked extremely well for two very successful organizations.

Like Google, the Nerdery has created an environment where techs would want to hang out. "They will work long hours and will produce results," Voysey said. "A happy, engaged employee is like gold."

Like the Geek Squad, instead of shying away from their "nerdiness," the company embraces it by incorporating it into the business name. "They wear it like a badge of honor," Voysey said. "It keeps them focused and sends a very clear message to their clients."

Voysey said he expected the Nerdery's business model will continue to scale well while also being difficult to imitate. "It has to be completely embraced by everyone at all levels in the company, especially top management. It has to become part of the genetic code of the organization rather than just superficial marketing," he said.

Todd Nelson is a freelance writer in Woodbury. His e-mail address is todd_nelson@mac.com.