Startup Focus: Kapow Delivers Web Development One-Two Punch

This Flyover Geeks Startup Focus is kapow, inc. (www.kapow.com) on Milwaukee’s east side. Kapow bills itself as a “boutique web design firm with full-service capabilities”, working primarily with non-profits, museums, public media, arts organizations and educational institutions.

I had a chance to speak with co-founder and principle business development/producer Megan Holbrook recently to get her views on the good, the bad, and the strange about being part of a start-up tech business in Milwaukee. Megan started by telling me how she co-founded kapow with two partners in Los Angeles, after several years of working in the multimedia industry. Her passion for entrepreneurship have always stemmed from wanting to build a company focused on listening to the customer and developing sites which reflected customer needs.

Megan and her partners Ethan Goldstine and Neal Steinberg started with humble beginnings in Los Angeles, but kapow quickly seeded its client portfolio with a customer base of smaller non-profits all the way up to heavyweights like the Hollywood Bowl & Los Angeles Philharmonic, and PBS. Non-profits now make up approximately 95% of kapow’s clientele. After two years, Megan moved to Milwaukee with her husband, which made it easier to work with the company’s east coast clients. Kapow takes pride in delivering excellence and consistency in design, usability in development, and efficiency in workflow. Growth has mostly been steady, and Megan attributes it to word-of-mouth marketing and repeat business.

Customers who return for updates, redesigns, or further work on their site are most important to Megan and kapow. She emphasized that it is kapow’s caring for the product that they are delivering that makes her most proud of their success, even as they face customers struggling for funding due to recessionary times.

Overall, kapow is still a small, tightly knit group with plans for the expansion of its public media work in 2011 along with a public media event in Washington DC, half a world away from its humble beginnings. You can find samples of their work, a list of services, and their contact information online at www.kapow.com.