If you want to fast, go alone. If you want to far, go together.
When you first walk into the iThemes office, a wall of small pictures and the company slogan—“Make people’s lives awesome”—greets you. This may be their motto, but the African proverb above is what really defines the iThemes culture.
The man leading this band of far-travelers? Cory Miller: husband, dad, entrepreneur, Oklahoman.
Cory started off working as a print journalist, but he wanted to share the things he was working on with the people important to him. With only print media, that isn’t the easiest thing to do.
Around that time, the internet was gaining popularity and people were figuring out more things you could do with it. That’s when Cory claimed his domain, corymiller.com, and started writing.
What started as an attempt to share his printed works with his friends and family turned into a robust (obsessive?) blogging habit. Cory began blogging, sometimes three times a day, because he wanted to learn, meet some cool people, and maybe figure out some of this entrepreneurship stuff.
This was around the time blogs first started exploding, and Cory was right there to seize the opportunity and take advantage of it. In an effort to learn more about web design and specifically this new open source platform called WordPress, Cory offered people a free theme.
Pretty soon, people started noticing and were asking him to do jobs for them. Eventually, Cory realized he was making more money from his night job than from his day job, and he came to the obvious conclusion that maybe this was something he should be doing more.
Not one to be prideful, Cory felt he wasn’t talented enough to work as a traditional, service-based web designer, but he saw an opportunity for selling products in the web design market. Enter: iThemes. He talked to some partners who liked the idea, and now iThemes is a wonderfully successful and growing company.
But maybe more importantly, iThemes is just such a cool place. According to Cory (and us), work shouldn’t be a four letter word; it shouldn’t be something we dread. At iThemes, there’s little difference between working and hanging out.
They get together on the weekends; they play board games in the office; and they have a ridiculously well-stocked kitchen. There’s a board in the kitchen where anyone can write something down for Cory to pick up for the office. Right now it says jerky and ketchup. They’re really shooting for the stars with their jerky+ketchup combo snack.
The source of this comradery is Cory and his commitment to that African proverb. iThemes doesn’t just want to go fast; it wants to go far, and to go far, it must go together.
For Cory Miller, it’s not just about profit. Profit is essential, but without purpose, without meaning, what’s the point? Cory doesn’t want to settle for just money. Money is great and essential to good business, but creating a difference is even better.
That service-orientation is evident in the nonprofit Cory helped found: The Div, Inc. The purpose of The Div is to serve as a hub for the Oklahoma tech community, teaching and encouraging Oklahomans to make waves in the tech world.
The core of The Div, though, is The Div Jr., a program to teach and train kids to be the next generation of innovators, entrepreneurs, and tech geniuses. Cory joked that the next big thing is being programmed in somebody’s garage right now, but we just don’t know it. The goal of The Div Jr. is to help facilitate that in Oklahoma.
If there’s one thing that Cory cares about, it’s the state of Oklahoma. His desire is to see this state become the next San Francisco, the next Austin, the next hub of fantastic tech innovation.
That’s why Cory is excited to speak at Confluence, where he will be speaking about entrepreneurship and especially about this idea of profit plus purpose. And we’re excited to have him working to benefit this great state.
