ENTREPRENEUR WATCH

Will Powley is the co-founder and chief cretive officer of Portsmouth-based Mad*Pow. Michael McCord photo

Will Powley studied to be a painter as an undergraduate at Boston College and the Princeton, N.J., native figures some day he will get back to his first love. But he's plenty busy now and quite happy with his current career as co-founder and chief creative officer at Mad*Pow Media Solutions in Portsmouth.

Powley and co-founder Amy Cueva oversee a 17-employee design firm that deals in the exotic-sounding but vital arena of user application functionality -- no small matter in a software-dominated world where user ease is often an afterthought. One of its main tasks is to build or transform business Web sites to make them more efficient for consumers and customer service representatives.

With the business, founded in 2000, Powley and Cueva have fostered quietly an impressive client portfolio that includes Monster, Timberland, Starwood Hotels and Mercer, Brooks Automation and other Fortune 500 heavyweights who can't be mentioned.

Ventures sat down with Powley recently to talk about the company's ethos of multitasking necessity, drawing the right talent and its curious pop-artish name.

On the best part of being an entrepreneur:

I also thought it would be great. Everywhere I've worked I've learned so much and I've seen what works and what doesn't.

The best part is the freedom and ease of decision-making. I worked in some agencies where it was so difficult to get things done. Now we get to choose who to work with and make the decisions we need to do the job, to really push the boundaries of what we can do to serve our clients.

On making application software work best:

Our motto is 'listen to your users and make it easy for them.' We do that through extensive interviews with users and find out the best way to use this software, to organize content and screen flow. The ideal scenario for (customer service users) is to reduce handling time, to handle one call smoothly and quickly and then move onto the next project.

On the Mad*Pow method:

We don't use focus groups, it's more like guerrilla analysis. For us, the user is the center of the model: we take all their feedback and make recommendations. It can be a very dramatic measure. We've been able to reduce training time from five weeks to five days, which is important in industries such as hotels where turnover is so high.

On the company name:

The 'mad' part came from people who noticed how focused and passionate I am. It came from someone who said I had Mad Pow disease. Some people think I'm crazy but I love my work.

On hiring the best and the brightest:

Through my own experiences working in other agencies, I've learned you have to hire great people. We only hire people who we think are smarter and more talented than us. You have to be a multitasker because everyone does multiple jobs. We've been able to draw people who are drawn to the work and the challenge -- and because we can offer Boston-area salaries.

On spreading the word and dealing with growth:

We've had a stable client base since the beginning and they (clients) have become our best sales references (the company didn't hire its first sales director until 2006.)

Since 2001, we've had 50 percent annual growth and couple of those we doubled. From 2005 to 2006, we doubled our Fortune 500 client base to about 80 percent. We strive to find smart growth to increase our productivity and client load without massive hiring. We do a real good job of multi-tasking.