Designing software in Madison and worldwide

Need help creating a mobile app or designing a website?

Want your company to get more exposure on social media?

Hardin Design & Development handles those types of projects and more, here in Madison and around the world.

Established in 2008 by Madison native and UW-Madison alum Jon Hardin, the custom software development company has offices Downtown, with branches in Dallas and Denver, and a total of 24 full-time employees, all but two of them in Madison. Several more are expected to be hired this year.

Clients have included Disney, IBM, The Golf Channel, Dow Jones and CNN.

Hardin, 29, is both a computer geek and an entrepreneur dating back to his pre-teen days.

Today, he presides over offices in the angular Verex Plaza building, 150 E. Gilman St., overlooking Lake Mendota. Typical of today's young tech companies, Hardin's offices feature a game room with pool and pingpong tables and video games. Ironically, chess — the formidable, low-tech game whose roots date back at least 1,500 years — is the current king among employees, Hardin says.

And, yes, there's also beer on tap. Employees vote on their choice of brew whenever the keg runs dry.

Hardin, the company's president, CEO and owner, won't divulge annual revenues but says they have been above $1 million "for a number of years."

Married to Mary Hardin, a high school English teacher, the couple and their two cats live in Verona, where Hardin likes to spend his leisure time tackling home renovation projects, such as the climate-controlled wine cellar he built last winter.

Hardin, the CEO, and Hardin, the business, are active in the local startup community and support the YWCA's YWeb Career Academy that teaches computer programming to women and minorities.

On the fun side, employees built a green, spaceship-style craft that was the only Wisconsin entry in the Red Bull Soapbox Race last year. Created at the Sector67 maker space, the vehicle took fourth out of 47 teams in the Aug. 29, 2015, contest in Cincinnati.

Hardin Design & Development may be a familiar name around Madison because of Scott Resnick, vice president of the company. A former Madison alderman and unsuccessful candidate for mayor in 2015, Resnick is also executive director of the proposed StartingBlock entrepreneurial hub project.

Q: Were you fascinated by computers at an early age? Have you always had the entrepreneurial bug?

A: I've always been interested in computers. My dad (Jeff Hardin) is a professor of zoology at the UW. Computers and programming were a big part of his research and teaching; he was always writing software. In middle school, I started teaching myself various computer languages and Memorial High School had an excellent computer science program.

As far back as middle school, I was always trying to start companies. One of my hobbies was programming video games. I'd create the game and try to find ways to sell it online. I didn't have much luck with that — you know, they were made by a middle-schooler. There was a 3-D sword fighting game and two games that were based on Star Trek. I'm glad I didn't have any luck selling them because I didn't know about copyright laws back then.

Q: How did Hardin Design & Development get started?

A: When I was in college, at Chadbourne Hall, my roommate and friends and I started Inzüm. It was a very ambitious project, like Hulu. Our goal was to license content from the networks and run our own TV network.

We got farther than you would think. We won third place and a $2,500 prize in the UW-Madison School of Business' annual G. Steven Burrill Business Plan contest. We had a contract with a network — we carried 30 Rock and The Office. It was at the dawn of TV on the Internet. No one had figured out how to make money on that, yet.

But our problem was that we were just a bunch of kids in a dorm room. Once the network and others realized what kind of fortune they were sitting on, they just shut everybody (else) down.

It was OK, though. It's fun to take those big home-run swings.

After that, I found myself looking for something to do. I was a sophomore and had a job at the Trace Research and Development Center. I started looking for programming work on Craigs-list and signed three clients during finals week.

That got me going into the summer. I realized there was an under-served market in Madison and a need for a company that could do projects at affordable rates but with the professionalism and infrastructure of an actual company. I started hiring people, we got office space on the Capitol Square (at the beginning) and we started rolling.

Q: You had some high-level clients early on, like Disney, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz. How did you land them?

A: We had a relationship with a marketing company in Chicago. They were able to get us in front of some big brands pretty early. We connected with them through Craigslist. I was systematically going on Craigslist and answering ads for companies that needed help with software projects. In those days, you could meet lots of people that way.

We weren't making a huge amount of money, but they were very good for our exposure and our portfolio. That, in turn, made it easier for us to hire good developers.

Q: What kind of work did you do for the big companies?

A: For the car companies, we were developing social media widgets, right when Facebook was starting to really get rolling. Companies wanted embedable content or applications on Facebook. For Disney, we created a Facebook game based on "Chronicles of Narnia."

Anything and everything, we would do. That's been one of the driving philosophies of Hardin: Pretty much anything in the software space, we're willing to take on.

Q: How far-flung are your clients?

A: We have around 1,000 clients, all over the world. In Los Angeles; New York; Chicago; Auburn, Alabama; Abu Dhabi; Poland; and a huge number in Madison. We really value the Madison market.

Q: How are you able to get hired around the world?

A: We have a very skilled sales team that works with various partners to find leads. But a lot of it comes from referrals. We take a lot of pride in the fact that other clients refer us.

Let's be honest: There are a lot of custom software development companies out there. Especially if you're in another city, there has to be a pretty strong reason to hire you.

Also, the cost of living in Madison allows us to be very competitive in larger markets. It's much more expensive to run a development shop in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York than in Madison. We're also able to have world-class talent. The UW and Epic Systems Corp. have played a big role in that. We hire a lot of UW alums; we also get Epic alumni. Pretty much every software company in Madison has hired Epic alums.

Q: What's your biggest struggle?

A: Figuring out how to replicate the skill sets of our top-level people. We could grow really fast if we could clone me, Scott and Kyle (Crossman, chief technology officer).

Q: What gives you the most pride in your company?

A: One of the products we're most proud of is a project we work on with partners in Dallas, a commercial real estate management and business intelligence systems company. We're building a software platform that is used by FedEx, IBM and AT&T to manage their corporate real estate holdings.

The best kind of project involves technology that I've never worked with before, that helps me grow as a software developer. Also, seeing the team we've built.

It feels so good to see them working together, to see the corporate culture that we've created continue to grow.

Source: Designing software in Madison and worldwide