Michael John Paladino

Michael Paladino was born with computers in his blood. He just didn't realize it until he went to college.

He also has a knack for entrepreneurship and teaching technology, two more things the 37-year old co-founder of Bentonville-based tech firm RevUnit didn't realize until later in life.

RevUnit is a digital product development firm, meaning its employees build software and help with digital initiative strategies and digital marketing programs. Paladino is the company's chief technology officer.

The extroverted IT guy found his niche in life just off the Bentonville square, where he runs RevUnit with co-founder Joe Saumweber. He insists the company he helped start 31/2 years ago is the only interesting thing about him.

"I don't say that to degrade my life's story, but I have had a great life with a lot of great opportunities," he says as he leans back in a chair in the front conference room at RevUnit, watching people stroll by on their way to the square. "There's just nothing too crazy or out-of-the-ordinary with my story."

People that know him disagree, describing him as a smart, family-oriented man who is genuine and logical. Paladino uses words such as conservative, extrovert, executor and nerd to describe himself.

It's those qualities that helped shape Paladino's life.

He has stepped up in the technology community to help the region add and retain programmers. He is the head of the Northwest Arkansas Technology Council and played an instrumental role in starting the Ignite program at Bentonville schools.

Saumweber says all those things helped the pair expand their company.

"We are alike in our values. Things that really matter are very important to both of us," he says.

Finding the right life balance is always a challenge. Paladino says he has four buckets he lives in: RevUnit, family, faith and community.

"Right now there's not much room in any of them. They are all kind of at capacity. If one increases that means another has to decrease. There is only so much," he says.

GOLDEN BOY

Paladino was born in 1978 in Little Rock, where he lived until heading off to college at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville. In fact, he has never lived outside Arkansas, calling himself "well-traveled" within the state.

The self-described mama's boy growing up had a stay-at-home mother and a father who spent his entire career as a computer programmer for the state of Arkansas. Older brother Chris helped Paladino see the advantages of loosening up once in a while.

"I grew up with a real solid family," he says, adding that his parents got divorced when he was in the eighth grade. "My mom was involved in school, my dad coached my teams, we had a small, little cabin on the lake where we spent almost every weekend in the summer, catching crawdads."

He earned the nickname "golden boy" at the Catholic school he attended in Little Rock. Going to an all-boys high school was an "awesome experience," Paladino says. "You didn't have to worry about what you look like. You didn't have to worry about impressing anybody. You just had to go to school and hang out with a bunch of dudes."

Paladino got good grades and mostly stayed out of trouble. His one step to the wild side turned out to be a learning opportunity. His father was out of town, and he decided to throw what he called a "pretty ridiculous party."

"At one point, 11 cop cars were at the house to shut it down, but they couldn't get through the traffic," he says. "I didn't quite know how to handle that and learned from that one before I even got in trouble."

Chris Paladino, who was already out of the house by the time his younger brother threw the bash, says it took a bit of work getting his brother to break out of his shell. Progress was made on that front when he opened his own business and hired Michael to sell cutlery door-to-door while he was still in high school.

"He was always smart. Even as a young child, he knew when to turn the page of a book when he was read to," Chris Paladino says. "He just needed to get more comfortable talking to people."

Michael Paladino says the best advice he's ever received came from Chris.

"He told me, 'Untuck your shirt every once in awhile. Life's more fun that way,'" Paladino says. "He also told me if you talk to people, they will talk back. I was shy at the time and have gotten over that."

SHAPING HIS FUTURE

Paladino had no career path in mind when it came time to start college, but he followed his brother's path to the business school at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville.

It was the late 1990s, and computer classes were gaining popularity. He watched his father work with computers his entire childhood but never understood what he actually did.

"After I had an intro to computer class is when I started recognizing it was something I had a capability in. I kind of nerded out," he says.

He found another passion at the University of Arkansas: his wife Leslie. They met their sophomore year, started dating their senior year and got married shortly after college.

"We joke that one of the places we really started talk was in a class called Death and Dying," Michael Paladino says. "There wasn't much to pay attention to in the class, so we talked to each other."

He paused when asked how long they had been married, smiled and slid his wedding ring off to read the inscription.

"We got married in '02, so it's been 13 years now," he says with a chuckle.

Leslie Paladino was not surprised he had to check.

"He knows the date, but he can never remember the year," she says.

Her husband is the man he appears to be, she adds.

"He's a genuine guy, 100 percent all him," she says. "He just always makes me feel good about myself."

Michael Paladino is a talker, his wife a listener. It works well for them, Michael Paladino says, though it exhausts his wife sometimes.

"She lets me work through my day, and she's supportive," he says. "There are marriages where the wife feels like she doesn't know what her husband is thinking, and she's never had to worry about that. She knows exactly what's going on in my head, if she likes it or not."

THE REAL WORLD

Michael Paladino's first job out of college was down the road in Fort Smith. He began working for Data-Tronics, the IT branch of transportation and logistics firm ArcBest Corp. The division has since be renamed ArcBest Technologies.

He spent about three years with that company, beginning a trend he followed over the next decade.

"I've kind of got a three-year mark for most of my jobs," he says, adding that's not the case for the company he helped found.

Eventually the commute became too much, and the couple moved to Fort Smith. He says the lure of going out on Dickson Street waned as they aged and settled into married life. Their daughter, 9-year-old Gabby, was born in Fort Smith. Six-year-old Peter was born in Fayetteville, following a hectic time in the family's life. Michael Paladino got a job at Rockfish Interactive, they moved back to Northwest Arkansas, and Leslie gave birth, all within a month's time.

"When you talk about the top 10 stresses in life, we hit a pretty good number of them in a short span," Michael Paladino says.

Paladino and Saumweber became fast friends while both worked at Rockfish: Paladino on the development side, Saumweber on the business and strategy side. Their different areas of expertise and close friendship would serve them well a few years later when they decided to strike out on their own.

They spotted an opportunity to start their own business after noticing a gap in the market, Paladino says. He was also excited about what he saw happening in Northwest Arkansas' startup community, such as the ARK Challenge competition.

"We felt we could run our own shop and use really small cross-functional teams to build great things; that's where the name RevUnit came from," he says. "Rev is accelerate and Unit is a small elite military team."

Naive and without any clients, they decided to start a business in September 2012.

CHARTING A NEW PATH

Like the majority of startups, they started small.

"We were working out of the office at Joe's house or the office/playroom at my house or a coffee shop," Paladino says. "That's not nearly as romantic as it sounds. It's really irritating to take conference calls at a coffee shop, but that's what we did for a while."

Their first client was Hillshire Brands. He says it was a small job, but it got things rolling. They picked up some more small jobs and landed a couple startup businesses as clients.

"When we started, we would take anything. If you could write a check, we would take it," Paladino says.

Within six months they had enough momentum to move into an office just off the Bentonville square.

Paladino says he never thought about being an entrepreneur or aspired to be a manager. He was outside his comfort zone and had to make adjustments.

One thing he needed to learn was how to be comfortable at work in casual clothes. Saumweber says when they first started the business Paladino always wore slacks and a button-up shirt, even when they worked from home.

"It makes me smile when I see him come into work in a hoodie," Saumweber says.

The hands-on computer guy also had to learn how accept that not everything could be quantified.

"Now things are much more subjective. My job isn't to deliver. It's to create an environment for others to deliver, which is much less measurable," he says.

The company now has a staff of 29 people, 17 working from Bentonville. Acquisitions and hirings over the years have some workers telecommuting from Dallas, St. Louis and Las Vegas.

Today's client list includes Nebraska Furniture Mart, School of Rock, Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Sam's Club. RevUnit's revenue has grown an average of about 95 percent each of the past three years.

The company's mantra, proudly displayed across the main wall of its office is "Build small. Learn fast. Iterate often."

"Iterate is kind of a nerdy word, but we're kind of nerds," Paladino says.

The team-based approach at RevUnit means employees are involved in most aspects of the business, including interviewing and hiring new people. Of course, Paladino and Saumweber have the final say.

Paladino says when he was looking for developers he realized how big a shortage there was in the information technology field. He began creating ways to train and retain technology workers, leading him to another passion: education.

THE NEXT GENERATION

Paladino found many ways to get involved, including becoming chairman of the Northwest Arkansas Technology Council.

Longtime friend Brett Ferguson says getting things done is one of Paladino's strongest traits.

"Michael has a bias toward action and to get involved in things," Ferguson says. "He doesn't just say things need to get done, he does them. That is true at church, the community and neighborhood."

The council puts on an annual Technology Summit that brings technology and business people together. He met Mike Poore, the Bentonville School District's then-superintendent, and Andy Mayes, director of technology. The educators talked with Paladino about a program that would help prepare students to enter the workforce.

Bentonville Ignite, the district's career and technical education program, started in August with an information technology solutions class. Paladino was a speaker and brought on two interns in February.

"They hang out with us two hours a day doing a real project. It's going to be a publicly released app," he says.

Mayes says Paladino's influence has helped shape the future of the program and the lives of the students he helps.

Paladino hired a senior intern to work for RevUnit through the summer. He hopes to offer him a full-time job. The student also plans on taking classes at Northwest Arkansas Community College.

"Programming is one of those fields that does not require four years of education and a $60,000 student loan," he says. "It's not that I disagree with college, there are just a lot of opportunities that don't require a degree."

He is also helping the University of Arkansas Global Campus create a curriculum for an after-hours coding school that would offer certification. Paladino says the program would target career changers and the unemployed.

RevUnit is also working with AR Girls Code, a program that helps do early-state computer science education for girls. Paladino says various research shows women make up only 12 to 20 percent of computer science workers.

"Technology education as a whole is a strong passion area. I see it as an opportunity for people to have a great career," he says. "It's been a great career for me."

NAN Profiles on 05/08/2016