Pacific Edge Projects Itself

It's six days before Pacific Edge Software Inc. releases version 3.0 of its flagship product, Project Office. This should be a tense time for cofounder, CTO, and vice president of development Scott Fuller, 40, and his team of engineers.

Their software is used by high-powered customers -- from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to a division of Starbucks -- and version 3.0 is a major upgrade. But what's remarkable about the atmosphere here at the young company's Kirkland, Washington headquarters is what's not happening. There are no arguments about cost overruns, no debates about whether to pull yet another all-nighter, no profanity-laced groans about something that's been forgotten or that's been left unfinished.

Indeed, at Pacific Edge, things are rarely overlooked. Its software is designed to help project teams communicate clearly, track progress closely, identify problems quickly, and stay on budget. The company prizes these same attributes in itself. Although it's easy to compromise order and discipline for superfast growth and hypercharged creativity, Pacific Edge isn't prepared to make that compromise. In two and a half years, the company has attracted 160 customers and has hired more than 100 people. It's expected to more than double its revenues this year. But through all of its growth, the company has managed to maintain a feeling of deliberate progress, a careful use of money, and a clear sense of priorities.

"This is definitely the most organized company that I've ever invested in," says Tom Simpson, 40, managing partner at Spokane, Washington-based Northwest Venture Associates, who was one of Pacific Edge's first round of investors. "Everything is on time and on budget. They've exceeded my expectations."

Paul Koontz, 40, a general partner at Foundation Capital and another Pacific Edge investor, feels that the company "creates a standard for human interaction with customers." Koontz says that he was impressed by a conversation that he had with Fuller, right before the CTO went on a customer visit. "I asked him if he was visiting a big account, and Scott said, 'The size of the sale has nothing to do with it. What's important is that the client challenge me.' It's golden to have that level of commitment."

Lisa Hjorten, 38, who is the company's CEO and who is also Fuller's wife, might be flattered by the accolades. But for her, it's just part of doing business. "We practice what we preach," she says matter-of-factly.

A "Careful" Culture

Scott Fuller and Lisa Hjorten built Pacific Edge around a simple insight about the future of competition and work. They met in Seattle in 1989 while they were working in sales for Artemis Management Systems, a project-management software group that sold big-ticket applications to large companies. But as they came to understand the market, they began to see a new opportunity. Smaller, fast-growing companies were going to be the next driving force of the economy, and the work that these companies were going to do would be primarily project-oriented. Yet most project-management software was cumbersome and expensive, which explains why 70% of the projects in these kinds of companies weren't being managed with software. More important, planning for the future -- not analyzing data to understand the past -- was the main challenge for project teams. Companies needed to have software that would help teams who operated across departments, instead of teams that maneuvered functionally in hierarchies that were already well established. "We wanted to change the way that people worked," says Hjorten.

Fuller fiddled around, and, in 1996, he started working on several prototypes for an application suite that he called "Project Office." The new software was simple to understand and could be installed within days or weeks, rather than within months. The software package featured plenty of functionality -- enabling everything from expense reporting, to budgets, to personal to-do lists -- but it offered the features in discrete modules, so that the software's power could grow as the business did.

Fuller and Hjorten wanted to get their new product out fast. They thought about building it within another company. They even considered offering it to Artemis. But in the end, they stayed on their own, relying on their knowledge of the market and a high credit-card limit. "The company was built on fumes," Hjorten says.

It was also built on Project Office. From the outset, Fuller and Hjorten used their own software to organize their time, to chart their customers, and to make sure that they had enough staff working on their highest-priority projects. Project Office implanted a culture of detail and control from the company's start. Today, meetings at Pacific Edge begin and end on time -- to the minute. If people think that they'll be even a few minutes late, they know to call ahead. And nobody is in the dark about what other people are working on, because everyone's work is tracked by the Project Office suite -- whether it's on the Web or on the desktop. Such a degree of focus and clarity means that the Pacific Edge staff has remarkably few late nights. The parking lot is generally empty by 6:30 PM. Fuller pushes those who stay later than that to go home, but he doesn't have to press hard.