As Delvinia readies for the launch of Methodify, its new automated research tool for marketers and researchers, Adam Froman is reflecting on how much his business has changed since its launch in the dot-com rush of the late ’90s.
What started as a pure-play digital consultancy is now morphing into what Delvinia’s CEO calls an “innovation company,” a term he admits is a bit hard to explain in one quick sentence. As a frequent golfer, Froman is often asked what he does for a living by new golf buddies. “My one friend always looks at me, just waiting to see what I’m going to say.”
Delvinia launched in 1998 offering consulting services to marketers clamouring to get into the digital sphere with little heed for how consumers would use or react to their online offerings.
“The big gap that I saw was in that rush to technology in the ’90s,” he said. “The dot-com boom was all about applying technology before there was a critical mass of a marketplace. It was a lot of ‘build it and they will come.'” But while Froman was advocating for stronger end-user strategies and research, clients were asking “do you want the job to build our website or not?” he said.
So while Delvinia was able to do traditional in-demand tasks like web development, it also developed stand-alone products to help clients get smarter about their online audience. (One particularly successful product, the online survey tool AskingCanadians, broke off into more of a stand-alone business in 2010.)
“I’ve been trying to convey a message of building [a web presence] that’s relevant for users, but at the time I was just riding the wave.”
Delvinia survived the dot-com crash of 2000, but since that time “digital consultancy” has become a much more common term. Such services are now offered by individual experts, freelancer collectives and full-service multinational creative agencies alike. “I knew that that was really going to be a really cluttered space for clients. Even the big technology firms were moving up-stream, teaching clients how to apply [their products].”
But around this time, business coming in the door from AskingCanadians began to eclipse that of Delvinia’s consulting practice. Froman wanted to be able to replicate that success with other tools he had developed, and has since pivoted the company to serve more as a platform for stand-alone services.
That is where Delvinia finds itself now, operating as what Froman calls an “innovation company.” While consulting is still offered, identifying independent and scalable business opportunities such as AskingCanadians and AskingAmericans are now the company’s main focus.
“To call us a digital venture firm isn’t really what we are. I’m defining ‘innovation firm’ as a company defining new business models, products and customer experiences. We’re able to help clients or ourselves commercialize those products and experiences.”
That’s meant reducing the number of production and development staffers in the 60-person company and relying more on partner companies to handle coding tasks. Growing the headcount now is all about strategic thinkers who can build businesses from scratch.
The next big step in that evolution comes in October with the launch of Methodify, an automated research tool the company has been beta testing with its client RBC.
