Applied Intellect

Applied Intellect was founded in 2003 by Christopher Boden (creator of The Geek Group) as a way of earning our own way. The Geek Group is a non-profit science and technology educational center based here in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Chris saw that as the Group exploded with growth that more and more time was spent on fundraising and playing politics and less time was being devoted to actually working on projects. At the time the Group was operating out of a large house in the Lovell neighborhood and our primary goal was to get a lab and offices. The amount of fundraising required to do that was immense and there simply wasn't enough hours in the day to do fundraising and built the projects that make the Group successful. Grantwriting is a major part of running any non-profit. You have to generate the money somewhere to pay the bills and keep the lights on. The problem is that grantwriting is a grossly inefficient process. It takes weeks to prepare a grant, months to process it, and in the end it's not unlike the lottery. The whole thing is a gamble and there are no certainties to it at all. Chris thought that this is an incredibly stupid way to run a business, so he created a better way. He created a computer company, and he did it in a weekend. With a trip to Lowes Chris built a large workbench in the basement of his house. He bought all of the basic tools required for anything you can ever think of having to do to a computer, and stocked one shelf with less than a thousand dollars in parts. Then he put on a nice shirt and started knocking on doors and making phone calls. The idea was a wild success. In the first year, with only 3 staff members, AI raised over $70,000.00, with the majority of it donated to The Geek Group. It not only paid the rent on the house and all of the bills, it funded some of the Group's flagship projects, like Thumper, Gemini, the Street Luges, Geekmobiles unit 1 and 3, and many more. AI became the number one computer shop for college students in the Kalamazoo area. It also started working with a lot of small and medium sized businesses in the area. We quickly learned that small businesses are treated very poorly by most of the other computer shops because they tend to need the most work for the least payoff. Because we're not focused on working from a corporate model, we can invest the time in these smaller jobs and the rewards we get in making new friends and establishing long-term relationships in the community greatly outweigh losing a couple bucks on the initial job. We're more interested in making relationships than money. AI operates with prices well below all of our competitors. On top of that we give discounts and referral bonuses to over half of our customers, and we STILL make a good profit and run a thriving business. And as of 2007, we finally did get that new lab. We own it now, no rent, no mortgage, it's ours. And we did it our way, we earned it, and we did it without having to write a single grant to pay for it. Thank you Kalamazoo, for giving us a chance and letting us earn our own way. We're proud to serve you and look foreword to being a part of this community and your lives for decades to come.