VIRTUAL Professionals

Tuesday, April 7, 1998

VIRTUAL Professionals

COMPUTERS: Company creators are students looking

for success in the ever-changing world

of high technology

By Jena Coghlan

Daily Bruin Contributor

The fast-paced technological industry demands volatile minds.
What better ones than those of college students?

Aaron Hawkey and Rob Angarita, sophomores in college, started
Precision Programmers, a business that builds and maintains web
sites and databases. They work with five other students who all
hold full-time academic schedules. Hawkey has attended UCLA since
1996, along with his technical director, Dave Roh.

Over the past 2 years, perseverance and commitment have enabled
them to create a niche in after-school jobbing.

"Sometimes I think our prospective clients expect to see a
30-year-old with a beard," says Hawkey, a computer engineering
student. But Hawkey says companies don’t use their age to
discriminate against them. At the beginning, it was tough, says
Hawkey, 20. They made a point to prepare presentations for the
meetings, "so they wouldn’t think we were just kids."

Angarita, a student at the USC business school and president of
the company, echoes Hawkey: "It’s kinda weird being 19 and doing
all this."

Hawkey, Angarita and Roh attended high school together in
Pasadena. Hawkey and Angarita began Precision Programmers Digital
Design Company Inc. in September 1996 after graduation. Roh joined
the company later at UCLA.

Hawkey and Angerita began tinkering with computers as children.
Hawkey, the brains behind development, says the company understands
the need to keep up with technology and its breakthroughs. "If Dave
wants a book, we’ll buy him one," he says without hesitation. It’s
been the motivation to increase knowledge that continues to bring
success, Hawkey says.

"It all kinda started with the computer books," says Hawkey.
Precision Programmers now maintains 15 web sites that they
built.

The company also builds databases. "I took a visual programming
class in high school and so did Rob. But Rob’s more the meeting,
books and billing guy. I’m building databases and designing
software. We’re doing great now, but to really establish the
company, we think it’s getting something on the shelf," says
Hawkey. He is currently designing a software program that will be
marketed to the mainstream.

The web sites range from Tangerina swimwear to Riverside
Residential School in East Godavari, India. Some of their best
business comes from local medical practitioners who use their
databases to organize information.

Networking has been the key to Precision Programmer’s growth so
far. "It’s word of mouth that works. A friend of a friend or an
uncle is how we began," says Hawkey from a dorm at UCLA.

They first outfitted Murikami Screen, silk screening products,
at the referral of a neighbor at Sproul. His neighbor’s father
works at the company. "They pointed us in the right direction. We
got the job, we did it, it took two months to make, and we charged
them almost nothing."

Money wasn’t an issue when the trio started the business. They
began when parents, loans and grants were available to help pay the
bills.

It paid off. Their biggest client came after a succession of
other jobs. The referral from a fellow computer programmer linked
Hawkey with Sound Storm, an Academy Award-winning sound effects
studio.

They had a malfunctioning computer system badly in need of
fixing. Hawkey took the old program and built a new database, which
took all of fall quarter and into the winter to complete. "I told
them I could do it, even though I wasn’t sure I could, because I
hadn’t before," he said. Hawkey says the job felt right because
there was an important element of trust between the owner and
him.

"It was great, feeling that Gordon was the first guy that ever
trusted me. It was hard, but I did," he says.

Sound Storm had about 200,000 sounds used to supplement movies
laying around on tapes at the studio in Burbank. Hawkey used a
233-megahertz, IBM-compatible computer at his Sunset Village dorm
room and made a state-of-the-art software program.

Fast and efficient, the database stores large volumes of
information in easy-to-locate categories. The Hawkey Library, as
Sound Storm calls it, organizes sound effects for movies. The user
selects different sounds by category.

If it were an aircraft noise like jet propulsion, the engineer
brings up a list where choices like take-off, landing, cruising
altitude are displayed, then stores the selected sound temporarily
on a notepad. At the end of the exploration, the sound is filed,
stored and ordered to complete the movie.

The final version, CEO Gordon Ecker says, is a "step-by-step
miracle. It’s very futuristic and it’s taking us where we need to
go in noise production."

Ecker looks for passionate people; Hawkey and Angarita made that
impression.

"It’s one thing to make a program work, but in Hawkey’s
(Library) you can actually see the personality."

Around the time of Sound Storm, Precision Programmers
incorporated itself, mostly as a matter of protection.

Roh, the company’s web site designer, has designed four web
sites and is working on more. He hopes to become a design student
but the classes are so impacted that he has not been able to become
one yet.

The best project he’s worked on has been the Riverside
Residential School in India. The referral came from a USC
professor, where four other Precision Programmers employees go to
school.

Roh’s web sites utilize creativity by adding a variety of
personal touches.

In the Riverside Residential School web site, nine different
page stickers border introductory copy. The school is raising money
using the Internet. Roh has used Sara McLachlan’s eye as "Vision"
and his own hand curled behind gray space as "Link." Everybody is
very happy with the page and gives their ideas freely in
support.

"What we usually do is use a combination of the company’s ideas.
Each person has a different strength, so the mixture works well,"
says Roh.

The company hosts web sites on a subcontracted server, a network
like the UCLA Residential Dormitory one. "People pay us monthly, we
update them and take care of any technical difficulty they might
have," says Roh.

Precision Programmers is always looking for new designers. Their
web site has all the information on how to send a resume and submit
a cover letter.

"It’s a lot of fun," says Hawkey of how they began." Rob and I
had a blast thinking up names at his dorm room in the beginning.
Our first name was Mystical Programmers. Mystical sounded like it
was going to disappear, so we changed it."

The long name, Precision Programmers Digital Design Company,
Inc., works because another company has a similar name and didn’t
think it was a good idea to use an idiom so close.

Hawkey and Angarita are looking to split the profits
fifty-fifty, to give workers incentive to work harder. They’re
pursuing the restaurant market and recently got a referral to a
company in Thailand to build a we site.

Angarita has enlisted the help of professors at USC in order to
become a better businessman.

"When we started growing we looked at the laws and business
standards. It was important that we did it. We also found an
attorney and a banker. It’s what needs to be done to make it
work."

And it is working. And they are students, reading academic and
professional books to make things happen. It’s not easy at first,
they admit, but in the long run they’ve realized the future will be
brighter.

"But the best part," Angarita says, "is to know our clients
believe in us."