Case Study — Leadership / Entrepreneurship
Building TAP Developers
Led a software development company delivering custom enterprise web and mobile applications for 7 years — wearing the hats of designer, strategist, and business owner simultaneously.
Role
President & Design Director
Timeline
2015 – 2022
Platform
Web · Mobile · Enterprise
The Challenge
In 2015, I joined The App Pros (TAP Developers) to lead the development team and take responsibility for product requirements, UX strategy, and design. Founded by two former teammates from a Fortune 15 healthcare company, TAP was one of the Midwest's early custom mobile application development companies, created to help entrepreneurs and established businesses turn ideas into viable technology products. When the founders sold the company to a major customer, I was given the opportunity at the end of 2016 to take ownership and lead TAP forward. I inherited a talented team of developers, project managers, and QA professionals—but essentially no financial runway and an empty sales pipeline. For the next seven years, I had to do more than design and build products; I had to learn how to build a business.
I focused TAP around solving real business problems through technology, working across finance, healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, remanufacturing, logistics, security, sales, service, and international marketing. Whether helping an entrepreneur turn an idea into a business plan or helping an established company understand how technology could unlock its next stage of growth, every engagement began with understanding the problem before deciding what to build.
Process & Approach
Client Discovery Framework
Developed a structured discovery process for every engagement — stakeholder interviews, workflow mapping, competitive analysis, observation — that gave clients a voice, creating confidence and clear direction before a single pixel was designed.
Design-Led Development
Positioned design as the lead discipline in every project. Prototypes preceded engineering. Client sign-off on interaction design happened before development started, reducing costly mid-build changes and improving delivery predictability.
Team Building & Mentorship
Hired and mentored a team of developers, project managers, and designers. Established standards, peer review processes, and a culture of innovation — ensuring quality, relationship, and honesty as the main priorities.
Sustained Client Relationships
Built long-term relationships with enterprise clients through transparency, reliability, and genuine investment in their outcomes. Many clients returned for multiple engagements and referred new business — the company's primary growth engine.
Outcomes & Impact
7 yrs
Sustained company growth and operation through the pandemic
20+
Enterprise clients served across industries
100%
Client satisfaction throughout the relationship with TAP
Over those seven years, TAP grew from that uncertain beginning into a company responsible for more than 60 completed projects, each representing a different business, industry, challenge, and opportunity. Some projects were straightforward; others pushed us into areas where the technology itself had to be proven. One particularly meaningful example was a secure, highly resilient live-video telehealth platform we developed for a health system. The system was intentionally engineered so that even a database or application-server failure could occur without disrupting the patient's experience. When COVID-19 transformed telehealth from an emerging capability into a critical healthcare necessity, the platform proved its value by supporting hundreds of patients simultaneously around the clock and continued to operate reliably for years.
Running the company and working with entrepreneurs and startups gave me a perspective most people rarely experience: the importance of a clear, concise business plan; the financial stakes behind every design decision; the cost of requirements ambiguity; and the value of trust built over time with clients and teams.