With Several New Hires, Kansas Startup Red Nova Labs Expects to Preserve Quality Process During Its Emerging-growth Phase

Online, May 13, 2011 (Newswire.com) - Red Nova Labs has always celebrated its startup culture. But with the paint still drying on a new building, seven new hires already in 2011 and continual growth for the web technology company's various platforms, Red Nova Labs is progressively transitioning from startup to a company with some staying power.

Suggestive of this stability, Red Nova Labs recently hired three new employees, plans to hire at least three more in the next month, and just celebrated its two-year anniversary.

"Because we're experiencing such rapid growth, it's critical that we employ capable people. We have to ensure that our systems thrive and that we maintain consistent levels of quality," said Robert Zhou, Chief Technology Officer. "When a company grows fast, quality can plummet because there are too few people doing too many things. We want to make sure that doesn't happen here."

One of Red Nova Labs' newest products is WebWorks, a service that produces websites for self storage and other local trades. Since February, Red Nova Labs has completed six websites and has three more that will go live by the end of May.

To facilitate timely development of WebWorks, the three new hires will all play a crucial role. John Pryor was hired as a graphic designer; Katelyn Stone was hired as an Account Architect for WebWorks; and Anthony Pierce joins the team full-time as a web developer.

Pryor outshined 40-plus good design candidates and comes to Red Nova after spending the last four years as Art Director at Big Dog Motorcycles in Wichita.

"John had a really clean, crisp style in his previous design work," said Rick Tinney, Red Nova Labs' Creative Director. "Even though he didn't know every little piece of the puzzle as far as what we do, he seemed eager to learn and apply his skillset as a complement to everyone else's. His great, laid-back attitude combined with his graphic and fine arts background makes him a great fit for the team."

Stone will help build the WebWorks' websites, along with providing customer support to StorageFront and WebWorks' customers. She will also play a key role in business development of more web-based marketing products coming down the pipe. Before Stone joined Red Nova Labs, the company's Web Visibility Manager Tom Cox was handling most of the day-to-day operations by himself.

"WebWorks has grown so rapidly that it has been difficult for one person to manage all of the existing client accounts as well as to map out new ones," Cox said. "Having Katelyn here will make a huge difference in turnaround times-getting sites live and responding to customers with support and tips."

Pierce was originally brought in as an independent contractor to help build Red Nova Labs' new website, a "pet project" of the company that has been on the backburner since last year. Pierce worked at Sprint for five years as a UNIX Back-End Developer, and that was the type of role Zhou needed to fill permanently.

"Anthony brings a wealth of experience in back-end server technology." Zhou said. "He will help Red Nova Labs maintain a lead over competitors with the usage of cutting edge cloud services and servers, as well as enhance the scalability and efficiency of our technology platforms."

Red Nova Labs' unfilled positions include Senior Programmers, Strategic Web Communications, Web Developers and Sales Managers.

Some of those positions, Zhou said, are tougher to fill than others-particularly the programmer positions. "People coming in are not going to know the technology that we use because web programming and the programming languages that are taught in school are a little bit different. At school, they teach you something called system programming; for web, it's not system programming, it's web programming. A lot of schools don't teach that.

"That's why the biggest thing we are looking for in the programming candidates is raw intelligence and energy-so they're willing and capable of learning something new and trying different things to reach a goal," Zhou said. "In a nutshell, we are looking for other entrepreneurial minds. If you're a good programmer and you have passion to build, you can pick it up. We can teach it to you."