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Advanced Technology & Manufacturing Center

Carol Skelly

Iatek LLC - Robert Gavin - The Boston Globe

Carol Skelly was a victim of the dot-com bust. When the e-commerce company for which she worked went bust in the fall of 2002, Skelly, five months pregnant, went home, had her first child, and started writing software. About a year later, she completed a code generation tool, which automates the process of writing computer code. And to prove it worked, she used the tool to produce software for creating Web and intranet sites.

But as she marketed her code generator, she found that customers were more interested in the Web applications. Soon, she was selling the Web software as an off-the-shelf product to designers, who, instead of building a site from scratch, easily could customize Skelly's software for their clients, as well as to small businesses, which for about $800, installed, could launch a website that is easy to maintain, update, and change. Business is so good that Skelly has outgrown her home office in Portsmouth R.I., and next month will move her company, Iatek LLC, to a 500 square-foot office at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth's Advanced Technology and Manufacturing Center, a business incubator in Fall River. She's hired two Umass-Dartmouth students to work part time with customer service and technical support, and plans, in about six months, to add a full-time programmer, as well as a salesperson.

 

After living through the rapid rise and crash of the dot-coms, Skelly wants to grow gradually, fueling expansion with revenues instead of speculation. Still, she says, the transformation from self-employed to employer is nerve wracking. "The nerves are definitely there," she said, "but it's exciting to be growing a business."

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