Visitors can mistake the Newport Beach office of Web design firm Kore for a beach-town coffee shop, used-surfboard outlet or industrial warehouse, depending on which entrance they use.
Mismatched, overstuffed chairs sit at angles in the front lobby, separated from a jam-packed working area by a purple velvet curtain that brushes the company’s mottled olive concrete floor. A rack holds Kore employee surfboards, while resident skateboarders use makeshift nooks in the exposed wood framing of the interior walls.
And tellingly, boxes upon boxes of new computer equipment wait for new workers, who have joined the company at the rate of 10 per month since October.
Get used to the look. The company,headquartered in a converted bank about a block from the Newport Pier,operates a similar 4,500-square-foot facility in downtown Denver. It also just bought 8,000 square feet of office space in Santa Monica and is closing in on $20 million in venture funding to open 12 more centers in the next three years.
Not Your Father’s Office
“We like to say our location is our vocation,” explains Adam Miller, the company’s 29-year-old co-founder, who called in old favors from a couple of college buddies-cum-architects to create the funky work space. “It’s a very deliberate design,” he says. “I didn’t want some stuffy office.”
That’s an understatement. Eclectic mosaic-tile ceramic highlights interior walls, which hint at KORE’s technological thrust with objects like cell phones, floppy disks and even an abacus embedded into the design.
How appropriate. In a task that requires a seamless blend of technical savvy and eye-popping artistry, the company designs Web sites for some of the best-known entertainment companies on the Internet, including Capitol Records, EMI Music, Virgin and Blue Note Records. The bank’s old vault houses KORE’s servers, the heart and soul of the company’s operation.
The 4-year-old company takes care of every aspect in maintaining a Web site, from design to custom programming to hosting the servers that make the sites available to viewers on the Internet. It specializes in so-called streaming media, which allows Internet users to watch videos and hear music without downloading large files.
The company pulled in $3 million in revenue last year and expects to post about $20 million this year.
The firm employs about 100 people, and officials say their biggest constraint to hiring more is lack of space. The company already has shed a pool table to make more room in its main office and last week was touching up an adjacent structure that had become available. Its communications director, hired two weeks ago, doesn’t yet have a desk.
The seat-of-the pants growth is typical for the company.
Lured by a television show that featured “a lot of great-looking California girls” and confident he would quickly find a job, a car and a place to live, Miller packed two bags of luggage and hopped a flight to Orange County two days after college graduation in 1993.
“I’m known as the level-headed one,” Miller deadpans, pointing out the differences between himself and fellow co-founder Alan Eiler, a longtime Californian who specializes in the hardware and networking end of the business.
EMI executive Eric Barnes was so impressed with the pair that he left his job to become KORE’s president and chief operating officer.
“I was just amazed by the technology,” he says. “They were the Navy SEALs of the Internet.”
Miller and Eiler met on a project and quickly saw complimentary skills. Miller,a Carnegie Mellon undergraduate who brags about having had an Internet connection in his dorm room in the early 1990s, before most people had even heard of it,handles the programming side of the business. Eiler manages the networking and system design teams.
According to Miller, Eiler is the dreamer of the two, constantly challenging his fellow entrepreneurs to take the company further.
That’s what company executives were trying to do as Miller spoke into his cell phone from New York, where he was checking in for a flight to Boston meeting with investors. They hope to close a $20 million private placement within the next few weeks.
Despite a rocky funding environment for the Internet sector, Miller says his company hasn’t had problems attracting investor interest so far. And though some e-commerce companies are having trouble staying in business, he says he’s seen no drop-off in business. Most customers are large, well-funded entertainment firms.
KORE has no sales people, getting all of its business from referrals. Nonetheless, the company has found itself in an Internet flashpoint as its music customers try to find ways of selling and protecting music online.
The company handles a range of customers, with an average project worth $2 million to $3 million.
Brave New World
“It’s a brave new world.” Barnes says. “It’s fast-paced and stressful. But a good kind of stressful.”
And so far, KORE has remained profitable, even factoring in a small round of angel funding last year.
In addition to its design work for other firms, KORE has created its own extreme sports site (www.sports3.com) that hopes to compete with the likes of Troublewear.com and Broadband Interactive Group, a joint venture of Broadcom Corp. and Gotcha International.
The newest round of financing will help finance a sales team and expansion into major U.S. markets. If Miller gets his way, the company will open its first overseas office in London next year. Each facility will hold 100 to 200 people and act almost as an independent venture.
And of course, Miller adds, “They’re all going to look unique.” n
