In our ongoing series of Startup profiles, we interviewed David Coyle, the founder of Coylebilt Industries, a Triangle based Apple service provider and iPhone App developer.

1) What is your 30 second elevator pitch?

David Coyle:  Coylebilt Industries specializes in helping our customers who use Apple products, to meet their goals and increase their productivity.  We provide a complete range of services supporting all Apple platforms, ranging from the Xserve to the iPhone.  We believe in complete, open and honest communication, with agile development that's responsive to the customer's needs: you the customer are the most important member of our team.

2) Describe the planning leading up to your launch?

David Coyle:  There was no discrete start point for this business: you could either say fifteen years of planning, or no planning at all.  I've brought all my experience in research methodology and scientific experimentation, coupled with years of IT consulting experience, to create an environment in which we work together with customers to really solve problems by examining their issues critically and from all angles. On the other hand, the mechanics of starting this business---which is virtually based---took no real time or planning beyond securing a domain and setting up and maintaining a website.

3) What market need do you fill?

David Coyle:  We cater to small to medium sized businesses, that need unique solutions, that fall in the IT donut hole of too complex for COTS, but too small and resource constrained to be of interest to the conventional IT consultancies.  In addition to that, we have expanded into the iPhone app market, leveraging our Objective-C language experience that extends all the way back to 1992.

4) What is your and your team’s background?

David Coyle:  I have a PhD in Geoscience and worked for a number of years doing pure research at the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics.  There, I did extensive computer modeling, simulation and visualization that required a deep grounding in Object-Oriented design.  After that, I worked for ten years in a variety of IT consulting companies, mostly working on really large enterprise systems.  I have an extended virtual team in Europe and North America that allows Coylebilt to grow to meet the needs of any project.

5) How are you funded and what is your revenue model?

David Coyle:  We are self-funded, we work on both time and materials based billable projects, as well as iPhone and iPod touch applications that we sell through the Apple iTunes App Store.  We have two applications for sale now, Deckster and Harry, and are expanding quickly into creating ever more media-rich applications.

6) What is the importance of being based in NC?

David Coyle:  North Carolina is a great location to do business: it is a significant market in its own right, but it also has great transportation infrastructure with easy access to all of the eastern US and Europe.  The balance between lifestyle and work is excellent.  I could not imagine starting a business anywhere else.