The year was 2000, also known as Y2K. The information technology industry was starting to become more intertwined in everyone’s personal and professional lives. Two friends, each with newborn children and wives who were making the career change to stay at home, became aware of this and thought, why not quit our full-time jobs and start a tech company?
Brief history
With Paul Boyer’s electrical engineering degree from Penn State and David Steele’s plethora of private studies and certifications from the Pennsylvania College of Technology, the natural-born problem solvers and rookie entrepreneurs launched Intrada Technologies.
What began in David’s basement with six clients and two employees has grown into a small business that has outgrown its office space four times. It serves nearly 200 clients with twenty full-time employees and quite a few freelancers brought into projects for their unique specialties.
Why the name ‘Intrada’?
Intrada is a musical term meaning prelude. The name was chosen to pay homage to David’s father, a renowned musician, composer, mentor to Intrada, and set the stage for the exciting business growth to come.
It wasn’t always easy.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 20% of small businesses fail within the first year. By year five, approximately 50% have closed their doors, and after year 10, only around a third make it.
Steele indicates that Intrada has had its ups and downs, good years and not so good years, but pushed through.
So how did Intrada stay on course and not become a statistic? David Steele chalks it up to not following how the average IT company does business.
Steele and Boyer built their business on their problem-solving abilities and continually invested in new ways to serve clients.
“We didn’t want to be the stereotypical IT company trying to add clients to our accounts receivable column,” he adds. “We wanted to start a company that offered clients the opportunity to forge and build an ongoing, collaborative relationship with us. We wanted each client to think of us as an instant expansion of their own IT department and call on us for any problem, issue, or improvement they needed. It is our unique client/partner relationship that has helped our company to grow.”
Relationships
Intrada was also building relationships with other companies to enhance service offerings to clients. One of these relationships was with PRworks, a marketing and public relation company based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.
The relationship forged into a strategic partnership. Intrada focused on the technical components and PRworks concentrated on the messaging and branding components bridging a common challenge between a technical and creative organization.
The partnership was unique to the industry and provided clients a powerful approach to create a strategic direction to maximize marketing and communication services. The partnership grew into a family-like relationship, so when owners Robert and Deborah Saline decided to retire and sell PRworks, Intrada purchased the company. Steele then hired Jason Kirsch to continue the Saline legacy providing quality, ethical-based public relation services to our clients.
Looking ahead
With a relationship-based business model serving as its foundation with a customer service goal to exceed our clients’ expectations, David and Paul have built a company focused intentionally and strategically on each client and their specific needs. Intrada continues to grow each of our service lines, including new cybersecurity and compliancy services, and align web analytics with campaign goals to streamline activity monitoring and targeting.
We are looking forward to providing technology solutions for years to come and are continually looking for prospects that value technology and desire to build a relationship with their technology partner.
Steele adds, “The information technology industry is constantly evolving. Intrada plans on doing the same, bringing new services and products to our clients to help their businesses run efficiently. Marking twenty years in business is an accomplishment that could only be done through our valued clients and partnerships. We Thank You. While our initial celebration had to be postponed, we are planning a September 2021 event to thank all of our clients.”
