From the ground up: a small tech firm bootstraps its way to success.

• Author: Kinder, Peri
• Position: Lessons Learned - Company overview

In November 2006, unemployment in Utah hit a record low of 2.5 percent. Everyone was happy, except for HR executives trying to locate qualified applicants for their job postings. Finding people to fill technology and engineering positions was difficult and often involved national searches.

Fast-forward five years and Utah's unemployment rate hovers around 7.4 percent--and HR executives now have more applications, resumes and job seekers than they can keep track of.

iApplicants, a job candidate tracking system, is intended to solve both of those problems. The company was founded by Ryan Kohler in 2006, when employers were scrambling for workers. His software platform helped these companies find qualified applicants from all over the country. And now that HR departments have more applicants than positions, the iApplicants program helps companies organize and track each application.

Without venture capital or investors backing his company, Kohler bootstrapped iApplicants from a home-based business into a thriving tech firm. And along the way, he discovered some strategies for nurturing and growing a solid business.

Find a Niche

From the start, Kohler targeted iApplicants to small and mid-size businesses, letting larger applicant programs deal with the big companies. The company now works with more than 1,000 clients nationwide and continues to expand every month.

"There are lots of different providers who do what we do, but they've focused on the higher companies with 2,000 to 5,000 employees," Kohler says. "We reach out to the smaller employers, the ones that might still be advertising their jobs in the newspaper--which is almost unheard of. They might have 25 to 50 employees or up to 500 or 1,000, but we attract them because they haven't been able to manage their applications."

Listen to Clients

With no outside funding, Kohler started by using part-time programmers, utilizing resellers and not spending much money on marketing. The company built out to meet demand and as it began to expand, more products became available.

"Someone who is funded, and has the money, tends to build out a more mature product with all the bells and whistles" Kohler says. "But someone who is bootstrapping it, like we did, builds what is asked for. We're not trying to predict what a client needs."

Kohler says he quickly learned to listen to his clients to truly understand their needs. Many of his clients are not technologically savvy and often avoid using computer...