Alumni Spotlight

Mark Stosberg '98
Chris Hardie '99

Web Masters

Mark Stosberg '98 and Chris Hardie '99

Ten years ago, when Chris Hardie '99 and Mark Stosberg '98 started a web design business in Hardie's Earlham College dorm room, they didn't really have a plan for the long term future.

But things have worked out pretty well. Summersault, LLC, the Web development firm they launched in 1997, has more than 300 clients all over the country. Hardie and Stosberg are now community leaders in Richmond, Ind., lending their passion, energy and expertise to their adopted hometown.

"I think that it's been grounding for us to be in small town America," says Hardie. "It means that we're not as tied in to the culture of conventional 'dot-com companies' as we might have been if we have moved to California and New York, but during the tech bubble of the late 90s and downturn after that, we were insulated."

"Besides," adds Stosberg, "Not many tech companies anywhere can say they are 10 years old."

Hardie, who grew up in Cincinnati, and Stosberg, a Frankfort, Ky. native, considered relocating to one of the coasts or a major city. After getting involved with local organizations, however, and finding that they could find local customers like Reid Hospital as well as national clients like 1-800-save-a-pet.com, the pair realized they could stay in Richmond and thrive.

Sitting in the comfy conference room of their headquarters on Richmond's Main Street, Hardie and Stosberg describe how their business has evolved from a graphic design based model, under which they mainly designed informational Web sites for companies new to the Internet, to their current emphasis on database-driven sites that offer interactive features for users. Both say that one of the keys to their success has been their ability to remain flexible in terms of the services they offer.

"A few years ago, any time a customer wanted interactive features on their site, it meant we needed to custom build something for them," notes Stosberg. "Now there are so many off the shelf products, including some that are free, people do not need to hire us to do that programming. But they still need help figuring what they need. So our business has gone from a few very large jobs that might last all year to many smaller jobs that come in every month."

To maintain their expanding business, Hardie and Stosberg now have four employees and plan to fill three additional positions in the near future so that they can continue to meet customer needs. Hardie and Stosberg agree that one factor that has helped them adapt to changes in technology and the marketplace has been their Earlham education.

"I think that our experiences at Earlham have helped us to be authentic in our interactions in a way that is not necessarily typical in business," says Hardie. "We also try to make sure that our employees have healthy, balanced lives. This all comes from values that Earlham helped us develop."

Stosberg adds that the liberal arts nature of an Earlham education has been a boon as well.

"The skills we learned in the Humanities sequence have helped us to be a service provider that has more than technical skill to offer," he says, noting that the writing and speaking skills that he and Hardie honed at Earlham have proven very useful in business.

They were also thankful that computer science classes at Earlham tended to emphasize theory rather than the use of particular applications. "The specifics of technology will always change," says Stosberg, "but a strong theoretical grounding is always helpful."

Another way in which Hardie and Stosberg were shaped by Earlham plays out in their interest in making Richmond a more sustainable community. Stosberg has served on the boards of such organiations as Clear Creek Food Co-Op and Cope Environmental Center. Hardie has served on the boards of Waynet.org and Main Street Richmond. Their individual efforts include Hardie's popular podcast featuring local news and opinion (www.richmondnewsreview.com) and Stosberg's attempts to encourage local residents to use bicycles for transportation (www.bikerichmond.org). In celebration of ten years in business, the pair donated $5,000 to Morrison-Reeves Library for new technology education programs and another $5,000 to the Richmond-Wayne County Chamber of Commerce to fund a speaker series related to sustainable business practices.

"We are trying to bring attention to issues of sustainability, energy use and climate," says Hardie. " Richmond is behind on these issues, but we feel that progress is being made."

"When we first started the company, we were very idealistic" Hardie recalls. "At first, we were only going to work with not-for-profits organizations, but then we realized that there were plenty of those groups who didn't share our values while their were for-profit companies that we really liked. We realized that things are not as black and white as we had believed. I think our experiences at Earlham have helped us to navigate this world."