Reyes Labs

Greg Reyes started Reyes Labs in 2003, working out of a coffee shop after leaving his first job out of college at Microsoft, where he had been earning roughly $60,000 to $80,000. He had about $15,000 to $20,000 in savings from that job. He wanted to build software the right way, rolling up his sleeves and rethinking a process he saw as producing poorly engineered and poorly designed software.

Reyes says he bootstrapped the business without taking any funding. Early on he kept his costs low, paying about $1,000 a month in rent for the coffee shop office and taking a day job for around eight months to cover expenses. The firm was not initially a pure services shop. Reyes was building some software and recurring revenue products of his own, but the agency model carried the business. The first year was a loss, with revenue of about $15,000 to $20,000.

The company's early client work included a first iOS app for Runkeeper, founder Jason Jacobs' fitness tracking product. Reyes says the team charged around $15,000 for that early project and was transparent that iPhone development was new to them at the time. Runkeeper grew to 20 to 40 million users, and the company later took the product in-house, which Reyes describes as a typical outcome when a client's product succeeds.

Reyes Labs grew into a firm with projects ranging from a couple hundred thousand dollars to close to a million, usually staffed with a full team covering design, product management, development, and back-end systems. The business has been profitable every year and has been named to Inc.'s 5000 for three consecutive years. The company has tried incubating its own products. It spun off AppLade, an app installation and deployment company, and has explored an internal employee feedback methodology, but Reyes said none of these ventures has yet become a home run or reached $1 million in revenue. The team has chosen to concentrate on its services business.

As of August 2016, Reyes Labs had about 80 employees across offices in Boston and Oakland, California. Total 2015 revenue was just shy of $9 million, and the company was on track for $13 to $14 million in 2016. Monthly headcount costs were close to $800,000 to $900,000 by mid-2016, up from around $500,000 to $600,000 at the start of the year. Recent work includes a navigation product built with the Perkins School for the Blind to help visually impaired users reach bus stops, which launched in Boston.