HQ: Boca Raton
Business: Custom Software Engineering Company
CEO: David Hartmann
Employees: 34
Website: thesilverlogic.com or tsl.io
David Hartmann, CEO of The SilverLogic
The SilverLogic is not your typical tech company. And the 26-year-old CEO, David Hartmann, wouldn’t have it any other way.
“We build iOS and Android apps, websites, web apps, business automation, iOT, augmented reality and blockchain technologies,” said Hartmann, who co-founded the Boca Raton-based custom software engineering company 5½ years ago as a Florida Atlantic University student.
But don’t call The SilverLogic a dev shop, because it is so much more, he said. In clients, “we look for long-term relationships. We will build the MVP but then we also help maintain and support it.”
What’s more, once The SilverLogic has built a product for a client, an integrated TSL marketing team helps acquire users and reach the masses with the new technology.
“Some of our clients were hiring agencies and not getting the same value-focused delivery they were getting from us for software,” said Hartmann. That’s when it became clear that TSL needed to be involved from development through user acquisition, he explained. This year, marketing is an integral part of TSL’s services.
In 2017, the company built 17 products for new clients, including Alf Boss, a resource for assisted living facilities, and entertainment-tech company VuPulse, in addition to supporting and enhancing others.
To support the growth, The SilverLogic has hired at least one employee every month since Dec. 2016, growing from 17 to 34 employees today, said Rory Michaels, who heads up marketing.
Consider this: 80 percent of its employees started as interns. Each employee has a personal development plan, promising plenty of experiences using emerging technologies on a variety of projects.
“No one has to swim in their own lane because there is no lane,” said Michaels, who previously worked in politics and Hollywood and was attracted to The SilverLogic because of the impact it can create. “Everyone is committed to build products that drive success.”
Hartmann, born in Germany, studied computer science and mathematics while at FAU. He had been doing contract development work on his own, and while taking an iOS development class, he teamed up with a classmate to form the startup. The concept: they could do better work by working together.
After graduating with bachelor’s and master’s degrees, Hartmann focused fulltime on developing the company. This marked the beginning of TSL’s growth spurt.
The SilverLogic Team wins Visa Developer Challenge in Las Vegas (Money20/20)
“Because I have that technical background, I care a lot that the software we deliver has to be very high quality and follows good engineering principals. So we have built up pretty strong infrastructure … that we share with all our clients. By working with us, they have an infrastructure level they wouldn’t have at the startup level,” he explained.
Entering hackathons allows team members to stretch their creativity and work with new technologies. The company’s “hackathon SEAL team,” led by Hartmann, has won or placed at every hackathon it has entered the past couple of years – nine of them – including Money2020 and Visa Developer Challenge in Las Vegas, the Miami Bitcoin Conference and eMerge Americas, where it will compete for a fourth time later this month. “It’s a great team experience,” he said.
And the learning never stops. The past few months, members of the company have been on a “world tour,” meeting experts and participating in conferences from San Francisco, LA and Seattle to Barcelona, Singapore and Dubai.
Then the company will bring it back to Boca. This summer, The SilverLogic will start a speaker series, bringing tech experts to town, some of whom team members have met on their world tour. The events will be open to the community. Stay tuned.