When you start your own dev shop after building a career in the agency world, you’ll need some serious street cred. The founders of Build This took this need quite literally and made it a priority to have a storefront rather than an office in a highrise in the Loop, which was typical for most dev shops in the city.
Shane Higginbotham, Garrick Schmitt and Sean Neilan, CEO, Director of Sales & Marketing and CTO respectively, intentionally launched Build This as the antithesis to a downtown agency.
Considering themselves as fairly client agnostic, they work with small businesses and startups as much as large companies, schools, artists and other entrepreneurial ventures with the aim to work on fun projects that designers and developers dream of working on. They want to be a place, according to CTO Neilan, “where, in addition to doing paid work, I can build drones, make art, study linear algebra, make music and be as creative as possible.”
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According to Higginbotham, the idea floated around for a couple of years before they went all in on the company, but they were sure they “wanted an environment where everyone can have an impact on the company, and see their efforts really make a change in someone's life.”
The current 10 person team, five of whom are developers, consider themselves a ‘full-stack’ one-stop shop with expertise in back-end development plus front-end and design capabilities. Quality Assurance is a key element of their business and thus they do their own QA in house.
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Adan and Sean Neilan, CTO, at Coder Dojo Chicago, a meetup group dedicated to teaching kids how to code
Having a unique shop is worth it, according to Higginbotham, who is excited that people off the street can bring their ideas for apps and websites right in to the store. All projects are custom.
The group is interested in expanding their services to Internet of Things companies and even have set their sights on opening future shops in the Bay Area and Austin. They'd also like to continue inspiring passion and dedication in their staff, stopping ‘at nothing to ensure that Build This continues to be the World's Greatest Workplace,” Hugginbotham said.
