Carson City Web firm lands work from software giant

In one furious week of long days and even-longer nights a few months ago, employees of Noble Studios in Carson City stuffed themselves with knowledge about land-use planning.

Their fast-paced homework is paying off. The Web development and marketing company is winning a growing number of contracts from

Autodesk, a San Rafael, Calif., company that dominates the market for two- and three-dimensional design software for industries ranging from construction to entertainment.

Today, contracts with Autodesk account for about 35 percent of the revenue of Noble Studios, say Jarrod and Season Lopiccolo, owners of the firm, and the contracts are highly profitable.

Even more important, the firm's track record with Autodesk is opening the doors for Noble Studios at other big companies.

Here's how Noble Studios, whose eight employees work in second-floor offices across the street from the Nevada Capitol, won the work:

It began, Jarrod Lopiccolo says, with an old-fashioned contact through a family friend who had connections at Autodesk.

Noble Studios, skilled at development of Web sites, believed the look and feel of good Web sites might be useful in some traditional software applications as well.

Its target at Autodesk was the big company's prototypes, quick-and-dirty mockups of design software that it rolls out to focus groups early in the development process.

After months of phone calls and presentations, the Lopiccolos convinced the geospatials solutions group at Autodesk to give their Carson City firm a shot on a prototype for land-use design software that Autodesk was considering.

The week-long crash course in land use was followed by more long nights of design and code-writing.

"We wanted to make the prototype look as if it were real," says Season Lopiccolo.

The little firm wowed the big software company.

"They were extremely flexible during the fast-paced demonstration concept phase, where design ideas were developed and tested on a nearly daily basis," says Richard Howard, product design manager for Autodesk's geospatials solutions group. "Their team brought great graphic design and flash prototyping skills and were able to run with my concepts after we worked out the primary interaction."

And Howard says the Noble team met critical deadlines for presentations to senior Autodesk executives as well as groups of potential customers.

Howard's good word with other Autodesk groups sent more contracts to

Noble Studios about 10 in all. And Jarrod Lopiccolo says the additional contracts have proven more profitable as the company no longer needs to re-invent the wheel with each job.

At the same time, the firm's owners don't want to rely too much on the Autodesk work. They've set their sights on winning at least two contracts this year from major companies with international presence and they're close to making announcements about their success.

Their biggest challenge now is recruiting top talent to Carson City. Among the perks the firm dangles in front of candidates: Annual company-paid treks to Europe, along with lesser events such as a whitewater trip down the South Fork of the American River.

"We have to make sure people we bring here have a good quality of life," says Jarrod Lopiccolo.