According to some software industry estimates, project expense overruns due to coding bugs and other mistakes cost roughly $55 billion per year. Jeff Van Fleet, president and founder of Lighthouse Technologies, is trying to bring that number down. “If I can take away some of that $55 billion and put it into new product development by helping customers’ software development get more efficient, that’s really the key that keeps me jazzed,” he said. “Our goal is to lower the cost of the whole software cycle, as well as to improve efficiency.”

Lighthouse Technologies performs software testing and quality assurance for its clients. The company fixes not just coding bugs, but many other issues that hamper software performance and drive up project costs. “We are a very metrics-driven company, and our data shows 45 percent of software defects actually get introduced before any code’s even written,” said Van Fleet. “Our methodology is about removing those defects earlier.”

Van Fleet founded the company in 2000 after working for years at a software consulting firm serving mostly government clients. In his last few years there, he was able to work with commercial customers—and he discovered that he enjoyed the experience. He had been thinking about starting his own company since the early ‘90s.

During his time as a contractor, Van Fleet noticed certain trends in the software production industry, trends that sometimes made things difficult for client companies. In particular, Van Fleet saw that much software engineering was more about “art,” and developers would often leave it to clients to fix nuts-and-bolts problems. “I wanted to bring engineering back to the software world and make it less about the art and more about the engineering,” said Van Fleet.

Most of Lighthouse’s clients are non-IT companies; they utilize technology as a means to an end, but do not produce technology-related products. Many clients come from the retail, transportation and utility industries, as well as the U.S. government. “Our clients’ organizations tend to be less honed on best practices in large enterprise systems,” said Van Fleet, adding that many of his customers can build smaller software systems but struggle when developing larger-scale products. So the projects his company takes on are almost exclusively multi-year, multimillion-dollar endeavors.

The lagging economy has not affected Lighthouse adversely; in fact, Van Fleet notes that the company is poised for 25 percent growth in 2012.  He says that a laser-like focus on improving software efficiency and a competent board of advisers have been key to Lighthouse’s success. Van Fleet also fosters a culture of independence among his managers. “[Work-life] balance is important to me,” he said, and he encourages his employees to cultivate a similar balance. As a result, the Lighthouse team is as motivated as Van Fleet himself when it comes to getting the job done right.

For more information, please visit: www.lighthousetechnologies.com