A Day in the Life: Scaling a start-up is hard work

CORALVILLE — Higher Learning Technologies began with three friends with a great idea.

In 2012, HLT co-founder and CEO Alec Whitters was a dental student at the University of Iowa. Frustrated with a lack of study tools available on mobile devices, he recruited childhood friends and fellow University of Iowa students Adam Keune and Ben O'Connor to develop their own solution.

They released their first mobile software, a learning application to prepare students for dental licensing exams, in November 2012. Five years later, Coralville-based HLT has dozens of employees, more than 100 titles on its mobile learning platform, $15 million in capital investment, and tens of millions of end users around the world.

While that kind of growth may be heady stuff, scaling a business is even harder than starting one, said Keune, who serves as HLT's chief business development officer.

'We found the customer need and solved it. Now we needed to scale it up,' he said. 'That meant more products, more content, and adding a bunch of new people.

'The hard part is maintaining focus and choosing the right opportunities that we have an ability to execute on.'

One new product is a mobile and desktop training platform for individuals trying to pass the commercial driver's license test. Under a 2017 contract with the Iowa Department of Transportation, HLT will provide the app free to Iowa residents.

The company also recently partnered with the Automotive Service Excellence organization, which certifies more than 300,000 automotive technicians throughout the country.

With a growing workforce that includes 12 to 15 remote employees working in such locations as Costa Rica, Keune said communication is a key issue in HLT's daily operations.

Employees work in small, cross-functional teams of five to eight people, each focused on a specific industry such as nursing or dental.

'On the smaller teams, everyone is able to contribute their ideas and opinions and are able to be heard,' Keune said. 'It's more of a generalist mindset, and everyone is an entrepreneur.'

The company brings all employees in-house for 'remote week' each year to nurture interpersonal relationships. Monthly 'sprint reviews' — in which each team shares what they are working on — create accountability and prevent individual teams from becoming silos.

With HLT's emphasis on employee satisfaction and creating a strong company culture, Keune said turnover is low. But working at HLT isn't all fun.

'The glamour and glitz of working at a start-up are easy to see,' Keune said. 'But the excitement is only about 10 or 20 percent of it. The other 80 percent is hard work, blood, sweat and tears.'

At a glance: Higher Learning Technologies

• Address: 2500 Crosspark Rd., Suite W145, Coralville
• Website: 

  hltcorp.com

• Chief executive officer: Alec Whitters
• Number of employees: 48
• Years in business: 5

About 'A Day in the Life':

Once a month in Business 380 Sunday, beginning March 4, we will focus on one business in the Corridor — what it does, how it does it, its successes and challenges, and who makes it tick.

How can you get your business featured in 'A Day in the Life'? Complete the easy application for The Gazette's 2018 Business Awards below.

Again this year, The Gazette will present awards in a number of categories — from education to health care, corporate culture to public-private partnerships — at its annual banquet ceremony.

The event will be sponsored by TrueNorth Companies of Cedar Rapids.

You can join hundreds of other Corridor business leaders from the for-profit and not-for-profit fields for networking, a keynote speaker and dinner at this autumn's event, set for Oct. 30 at The Hotel at Kirkwood Center in Cedar Rapids.

More details will be unveiled in regard to the event itself as it gets closer.