Young Reno software firm

Universant Corp. is no longer flying under the radar. Judges voted the Reno company winner at the annual "Under the Radar" conference in Silicon Valley last month.

The conference is a good place to get traction with investors and bloggers, say Craig Macy, chief executive officer and Joe Hage, chairman. And they count on the windfall of publicity that accompanies the award to propel their company's growth.

The winning software is Universant Application Design Studio. The developers describe it as, "Something complicated that got simplified."

As examples, they point to word processing programs that hide complex programming code behind drop-down menus. Web page editors do the same for Internet sites.

However, software designers still write raw code for each new program. Universant, say its developers, provides an end-run around that tedious process.

"We developed 70 discrete software products during our careers," says Macy, a Silicon Valley veteran. "Each time we'd do the same horrific programming steps. And we've said this every time: There must be a simpler way to do this."

The traditional software development model has multiple steps: the Universant model boils it down to three steps: idea, model, release, says Hage.

To simplify the programming task, the inventors assembled a team of seven that toiled two years to figure out how to refactor and link the components together. The effort was self-funded by Universant's three co-founders, Macy, Hage and Raymond Lin, chief technology officer.

The result, says Macy, is the modeling module known as Application Design Studio. Now a task that once took $1 million and a full year's work by 35 people can now be done with $35,000 in two months by two people.

The software sells as a stand-alone package or as a pre-installed, pre-configured appliance in a box that plugs into a computer network much like a flash drive plugs into a computer.

Potential customers range from the owner of a Web site who wants to add a social networking aspect to those who want to build a complex, branded application, says Macy.

Universant participates in the Microsoft Acceleration Program, designed to boost fledgling companies that may prove strategic to Microsoft's goals, says Macy. The program provides discounted product, marketing assistance and vital introductions.

Universant plans to sell direct to customers, but Macy adds, "Microsoft and Hewlett-Packard are huge channels for us."

Licensing fees range from $25,000 to $500,000, in tandem with a sliding scale of royalty payments, with a cap of 14 percent for a no-cost license.

Looking to the future, the developers see challenge in the changing tech climate. Software, traditionally, resident on the user's hard drive, increasingly is migrating online, in a process dubbed "in the cloud."

"We need to do well with both worlds of drive-resident and virtual-resident software," says Hage.

"It's an immature technology, very young, under a year old."

But very soon, he adds, "Cloud-based computing is sure to be dominant."

Managing growth is another challenge.

"If Microsoft starts distribution, we could go from single-digit to quadruple-digit customer base," says Macy. "If we take on every opportunity coming, we could have thousands of customers immediately. We can't handle that."

So job one is getting venture capital and staffing up.

Universant expects to employ 50 this year.

"Reno is close enough to Silicon Valley to keep a finger in the scene," says Macy. He cites this region's lifestyle and business-friendly pace as a plus. But as Universant grows, Hage sees a need to open an office in the Bay Area, due to a lack of local talent.

However, adds Craig, "I'd rather get people to move here."