Business idea reunites three longtime friends
Dot-com bust didn't prevent UDigs founders from starting information-technology firm
BY JEFFREY KELLEY TIMES-DISPATCH STAFF WRITER
Sep 20, 2004
Alot of people lose touch with each other after middle school. They make new friends in high school, college and at work. Life seems to take old friends down different paths.
But there are exceptions to that rule.
Friends since their days in middle school, Logan Bragg, Andy Frank and Jason Williams are all graduates of Mills Godwin High School in Henrico County.
"We literally all hung out in the same group of friends," Williams said.
After high school, they attended different colleges and worked in a variety of sales, business development and staffing positions.
| THE RESUMES |
Logan Bragg Andy Frank Jason Williams |
Started company in 2001
They came back together in late 2000, after meeting at a local YMCA gym, and talked about forming a business plan.
The plan took shape in a series of meetings at the golf course, at coffee shops and Frank's Richmond home. In April 2001, they started an information-technology staffing firm called UDig Technologies LLC.
The UDig name means nothing; it's just different, they say, which is exactly what they were looking for.
"I think we all had the same ideas that we wanted to do it as different as possible from the get-go," Williams said.
Three types of placement services
From its offices in Glen Allen, the UDig placement process works in three ways:
- Contract hiring offers companies a temporary solution to their IT needs. UDig will evaluate candidates to make sure a potential employee is a good fit for the company, no matter how long the stay.
- Contract-to-hire is a similar arrangement, but gives both the employer and employee a chance to see of each is a proper fit.
It's "try before you buy," said Bragg. Contract-to-hire allows UDig to place an employee in a company for a set amount of time say, six months to see if the IT staffer is the right hire.
Once the contract is up, the company has the choice of offering employees full-time positions or letting them go.
"I think people are willing to prove themselves to get the opportunity to get a full-time position," Bragg said. About 90 percent of UDig employees end up working for a company after the contract-for-hire period has expired, he added.
- The third option for a UDig client, though less frequently used, is permanent placement. As the title suggests, companies can fill IT positions with hand-picked candidates from UDig.
UDig has employees working at companies in a range of fields, including law, finance, retail, insurance and health care.
'They get to know me'
"They do a pretty thorough interview, they don't just send me someone of the street," said James Stewart, associate director of systems testing at LandAmerica Financial Group Inc. in Richmond. "They get to know me and what I like."
Stewart has done business with UDig for the past 18 months.
A phone call from Williams sparked Stewart's interest in UDig. He has hired four UDig employees since.
"The advantage for us is that it first gives us a test run, and we get to see how [UDig IT staffers] work in our group," Stewart said. "I'm very pleased. They are great to work with."
Bad timing?
But getting contracts with clients such as LandAmerica did not come without a struggle for UDig. Some observers questioned the timing of the firm's start, at the end of the dot-com boom.
At the height of that boom, in the late 1990s, demand for IT workers skyrocketed But when the technology stock bubble burst in 2000, many tech firms crashed and burned.
That was about the same time that the idea for UDig was in the works.
"There were definitely people that said, 'Don't do it right now.'"
But they did start the company. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks.
Frank said 2001 wound up being "the worst tech year ever. Nobody knew who we were, and nobody was hiring."
Williams recalled that "because the market did such a switch, employers almost had an upper hand" in recruiting former dot-com IT staffers.
Solid growth in recent years
Nonetheless, UDig survived and has shown solid growth since.
Though the company would not disclose revenue figures, the founders said revenue grew 215 percent from 2002 to 2003. To date, company revenue is up 75 percent from last year.
The company recently began offering technology consulting to small businesses.
As for the future, Williams said the founders want the company to remain regional but expand throughout the mid-Atlantic.
That could include offices in Tidewater, Northern Virginia, North Carolina or Maryland.
Or "Maybe Tampa," Williams added. "Play a little golf."
Contact Jeffrey Kelley at (804) 524-9725 or jkelley@timesdispatch.com