Atlanta’s Hannon Hill, pardot and Shotput Ventures share a company culture reminescent of the dot com days.
By Allan Maurer
A visit to the offices of Hannon Hill, pardot and Shotput Ventures on the 33rd floor of the One Atlanta Plaza building is likely to impress any potential customers, partners or employees. But what impressed us most was the unique flavor of the company culture.
Hannon Hill sells Web marketing software and a Web content managment system, Cascade Server, widely used by customers in education, government and non-profits, technology, and healthcare, among other businesses.
More than 130 colleges and universities use the Cascade Server as the content management tool for campus Web sites.
Founded in 2006, Pardot sells on-demand interactive marketing solutions.
Shotput Ventures launched its first class of eight startups with seed funding of about $25,000 each last year. The eight firms have all joined the Atlanta Technology Development Center.
David Cummings, CEO, president and founder of Hannon Hill and CEO and co-founder of pardot and co-founder of Shotput, is also an accomplished programmer who has written code for commercial applications in Ruby, Java, PHP, ASP, and Visual C++.
Cummings showed us around the Hannon Hill/pardot offices in April, and introduced us to a company culture that reminded us of the dot com boom years.
The Hannon Hill offices on the 33rd floor of black glass monolith One Atlanta Plaza, provide a dizzying view of the city. Looking straight down induces a bit of vertigo. Hannon Hill CEO David Cummings, here enjoying the view, tells us the traffic helicopters fly by “at nearly eye-level.”
Looking around inside the roomy Hannon Hill/Shotput offices, however, reminds you of the heady dot com days at the end of the last century.
Cummings is not only a successful entrepreneur, but through Shotput Ventures, which seeds and incubates a yearly class of startups, he helps new tech companies get a headstart.
Like everything in the Hannon Hill and pardot offices, the company lobby suggests a high tech operation.
The Hannon Hill recreation areas include this vintage pinball machine. The company’s culture harks back to the days before the dot com bust.
Another rec room sports a ping pong table. Everyone was hard at work at their desks when we visited.
We spotted this huge book on a stand by itself next to a window. “It’s the company culture book,” Cummings told us. Whenever anyone new joins the company, they can read about everything from company history to local restaurants.
The culture book includes entries on events such as the brief “Rocket Wars” that ensued at a conference.
When Hannon Hill makes a sale, they ring the gong. We’re not sure what the telescope is for, but they certainly have the view for one.
Pins in the map show where Hannon Hill’s software is in use. There’s a similar map on the Hannnon Hill Website.
We could easily show you another half dozen photos of such things as the college and university banners hanging over cubicles, the long expanse of desks, and many double monitor setups, but to get the full effect, you just have to be there.
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