Managing an employee ownership model in an IPO world

Athens Group Inc. (AG), founded in June 1998, is an Austin-based, 100% employee-owned consulting firm specializing in technology strategy and custom software development. At a time when start-ups are plentiful-but rarely profitable-and talented people are scarce, AG has almost 50 outstanding software professionals, each with an average of 15 years of experience; has completed projects of global impact for Fortune 100 clients; and expects to earn $6 million in revenue in 2000. Athens Group builds software processes into the infrastructure of each client project. The “backbone” of each project is a repeatable software development process that is consistent with the Software Engineering Institutue´s guidelines and appropriate to the needs of the client. These same principles have also been used on internal projects since the company´s first few months, when most start-ups are prone to using a “get it done and we´ll figure out what we did later” approach. Employee ownership as a founding principle has connected profit to process