What Is So Great About Seven?

A look back at 7 years of ArrowQuick.

July 7, 2007 will be a popular anniversary date for years to come as hundreds of couples chose that date to get married due to its “lucky” numeric value on the US calendar (07/07/07). Las Vegas doesn’t help us with of superstition on numeric values. To hit a jackpot on many slot machines 7-7-7 will do nicely. Let’s not forget the seven wonders of the world.

AQ Takes Seven Seriously

ArrowQuick has a reason to love the number seven. We are finishing up our 7th year of business! March 3rd (not 7th) will be our official 7th birthday. I always assumed that we would make it seven years. But, once the reality set in I’m truly amazed.

Short History Lesson

ArrowQuick started as a dream of two professors and two students. My fellow professor and current business partner, Perry Lund, had been working on the William Penn University website during our “spare time.” We would often visit about how we thought there would be a real need for website development expertise in the Oskaloosa area. We even spent some time jotting down possible names for this potential business. <sarcasm>That is the basis of all good businesses after all, a solid name. </sarcasm> Some of our early renditions of the name were OskyWeb, QuickSilver web design, and even Arachnoweb (every early designer wanted a spider theme of some sort!). Perry and I soon got caught up in the daily routine of work and let the subject drop.

A few weeks before the end of the first semester in 2000 at William Penn University I had picked up my first freelance web design job. At the same time, I was teaching a new elective class at William Penn called “web programming.” One of my students in that class, Ryan Jund, kept bugging me about my freelance jobs and asked me how he could help. He suggested we start a company and do web design on a much larger scale. I was intrigued that the idea was rearing it’s head again. A second student, Melinda Stonebraker was in the room during one of our conversations and stated she would be interested in helping. Both of these students were on the verge of graduation and looking for future prospects. The three of us began formulating a name, we used many ideas from earlier conversations with Perry. ArrowQuick was settled upon. We desired to convey a name that would tie us to the community but still have a “techy” feel. We created our first website, put it up on William Penn’s web server (oops! Bad idea…but that is another story.) We signed up for the Oskaloosa business fair, each pitching in $50 as our initial investment.

In the meantime, Perry Lund, was working as Technology Coordinator for the Oskaloosa School District. I gave him a call and pointed him to arrowquick.com and told him we (Ryan, Melinda and I) were starting the business. I asked him if he wanted in. After contemplating a career as a tech coordinator in the public schools he quickly said “YES!”

Projects & People

The last seven years have brought many projects across our table. Our first major projects came fairly quickly. In our first year we had landed six major projects. We also had begun a relationship with another start-up company “MCG.” Through that relationship we were able to offer web hosting to our clients, extending our services. Looking back at our list of projects and sites I’m amazed that ArrowQuick has completed over 120 separate websites!

We hired our first employee in August of 2001. Our first employee was a student at William Penn who served as our office manager. By 2004 we had shifted the ownership of the company to two partners, Rob and Perry. Ryan Jund moved back to his native Idaho where he is raising a family and teaching at College of Southern Idaho. Melinda still works for ArrowQuick as a vital part of our web team while raising two lovely girls. Our first full-time employee was hired in November of 2003. Eric Heikes has been with us ever since and has been an integral part of the growth of ArrowQuick. As of 2007 we have had upwards of 14 employees at a time on payroll. Much of this is due to the various services we have added to our business in the last seven years.

Sticking to the Plan

I was cleaning up the filing cabinet about three months ago. In doing so, I found the minutes to our very first business meeting after incorporating ArrowQuick. In that document we laid out what we would like to see in five years. Here is a quote from that planning document:

We discussed our dreams for ArrowQuick. Among the ideas for where we want AQ to go were: having our own office and 12-15 trustworthy employees, including part-time workers going to school at Penn, having our jobs as owners being salesmen and being able to work in whatever department we want to help out in each day, being able to get plenty of new information about the latest technologies, having AQ be a big supporter of the community and of non-profit organizations, and other ideas as well.

Amazingly enough we have met many of these goals. William Penn continues to be a great source of part-time and full-time employees. We work hard to support the local community and charities.

Location Location Location

Our first few months of business we worked out of Perry Lund’s basement. All good technology companies have to start out in basements. It is law! We each brought our own machines. Three of us used our laptops from school. Old IBM thinkpads served as our “high-powered” design machines. Perry had his own Mac laptop. We tried to co-locate our web hosting server with a company in California, who called about every other day to let us know our server had been hacked into. Thank goodness for MCG and their willingness to let us co-locate locally. All our web work was done on a blazing fast 56k modem connection! Our first phone system consisted of a wireless head set that was pass from person to person.

The basement was feasible only for a short time as we began to feel the constriction of tight bandwidth. We began seeking out locations where we might be able to get a faster internet connection. The square in Oskaloosa had recently be upgraded to a higher bandwidth wireless solution. We found a computer company, Faster Image, who was willing to sublease a small (300 sq/ft) area to us. Little did we know his lease didn’t allow for subleasing. We moved in to this area in June. The space was less than adequate, but the internet speeds were fantastic. The owner of the building we were subleasing found out what we were up to and was kind enough to forgive our trespasses. He offered us our own space in the basement of his building. What a break! Our own space. A local architect drew up some really modern and “techy” design plans. We moved into our completed space on September 15, 2001 — only days after 9/11.

Business in the basement was brisk, but challenging. Not everyone likes going downstairs to conduct business. Not every employee likes living in a veritable dungeon. Many times you would emerge from work with that permanent squint from being in the dark all day.

We eventually added so many services and employees we had to take the space next to our basement home. This too filled quickly. We began to get desperate to get above ground and have window space for advertising. We caught wind of space in the mall that might fit our needs. In July 2005, we once again packed up and moved to Penn Central Mall.

In December 2006, Rob and Perry purchased The Document Source in Centerville, Iowa. This became ArrowQuick’s second full-service location and has shown to be a successful expansion. Melinda Stonebraker works out of a home office in Tipton, Iowa.

We will continue to look for ways to improve our location and potential expansion of the business.

Is Eight as Lucky a Number?

While seven has been fun, I’m mostly looking forward to the future. I’m not superstitious but “knock on wood” things are going to be great in year eight. We look forward to serving our community and reaching our goals. Taking a look at the history of AQ over the last seven years has served to strengthen my resolve in our future endeavors.

Read More

• Heikes Becomes Partner at ArrowQuick Solutions Technology Consulting
• Video Tour of Our New Digs
• Ch-Ch-Changes
• Brand New Brand
• Meet Dimitar Dimitrov

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