Today we’d like to introduce you to Devon Thomas.
Hi Devon, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
I actually started the agency as a way to bootstrap my other ventures. Back in 2014 I was doing tech consulting on the side to help fund a startup called Dine & Dash. The idea came out of something we noticed in our research: people were increasingly paying up for lunch at the Chipotles of the world because the food was better and they were pretty inelastic to price, and it was quietly crushing the better local restaurants. When we dug into why, the real motivator wasn’t the food, it was time and convenience. So we built a platform that let you order ahead and integrated directly with the top POS systems and receipt printers, so a restaurant could have your food ready by the time you walked in. The goal was simple: let people enjoy their favorite restaurants in the same time it would take to grab Chipotle. We won a pitch competition with it and got accepted into NuSpark, the incubator at Virginia Tech.
Dine & Dash didn’t ultimately take off. My technical co-founder left for a job at one of the big tech firms, and I shifted my focus back into the consultancy.
This was all happening while I was president of the entrepreneur club at Radford University. I was splitting time between apartments in Radford and Blacksburg to stay close to my ventures, and I was actually roommates with the president of the entrepreneur club over at Virginia Tech. Eventually I was spending almost all of my time on the ventures and almost none of it on school, so in 2014, two years in, I dropped out. It was scary at the time. But I felt reaffirmed pretty quickly when I started getting invited back to guest speak for MBA classes at both Radford and Virginia Tech.
Since then the company has grown to 26 employees. We’ve brought on large Fortune 500 clients like ESPN and Volvo, and in a full-circle moment, both Radford and Virginia Tech became clients of ours too.
More recently I found myself missing the technical side, so I moved into a Creative Director role to stay closer to the work. In practice I act as a project manager who has the final say on the creative side of everything we put out.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Absolutely not.
The hardest part early on was being desperate for clients and taking on work we probably shouldn’t have. We said yes to everything that walked through the door and kept reshaping the business around each client, which was a problem. These days we’re much pickier. We’ve actually fired a few clients, and we’re a lot more comfortable pushing back when a client steers us toward a bad call.
Being a college dropout is never easy either. There’s always a part of you wondering whether it was the right move.
The other ongoing challenge is that I’m a huge brainstormer, so staying locked on a single project for long stretches is hard for me. It’s actually one of the reasons I love running an agency. I get to jump from project to project, and that variety keeps me at my best.
As you know, we’re big fans of Neutrino Design. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
At our core, Neutrino is a UI/UX design and web development agency. We have offices in Arlington and Blacksburg, and a team of about 26. We build digital products and experiences for everyone from Fortune 500 brands like ESPN and Volvo to Virginia institutions like Radford and Virginia Tech.
What we specialize in is the full arc of a digital product: the strategy, the design, and the build. We’re not just a design shop that hands off a pretty mockup, and we’re not just developers waiting on someone else’s specs. We do both, which means the thing we design is the thing we actually ship, and nothing gets lost in translation along the way.
One area we’re known for, and one I care a lot about personally, is accessibility. Section 508 compliance and accessible design aren’t a checkbox for us, they’re baked into how we work. That matters for our institutional and government clients especially, but the truth is it makes the product better for everyone.
What sets us apart is that we treat clients as partners, not order-takers. Early on we took every job that came through the door and bent the business around each client. We learned the hard way that the best work comes from being willing to push back. If a client steers us toward a bad decision, we’ll tell them, and we’ll explain why. That honesty is something clients come back for.
Brand-wise, the thing I’m proudest of is the full-circle stuff. I dropped out of Radford and Virginia Tech’s backyard to chase these ventures, and now both schools are clients of ours. We’ve grown from a side hustle funding another startup into an agency that Fortune 500 companies trust. That arc says a lot about how we’ve earned our reputation, one project at a time.
If there’s one thing I’d want your readers to take away, it’s that we care about doing the work right more than doing it fast or cheap. We’d rather build something we’re proud to put our name on.
What do you like best about our city? What do you like least?
What I love most about Blacksburg is the community. It’s a rare thing to find. You’ve got this concentration of forward thinkers in what’s otherwise a mostly rural setting, so you get the benefits of a smaller town and great access to the outdoors at the same time. And it’s striking how many leaders and serious talent can be traced back to this area.
What I like least are the travel options. Flights out of Roanoke are sparse and tend to run late, which makes it genuinely hard to plan around.
Pricing:
- All engagements are billed time and materials rather than fixed-bid.
- Our rates are standardized to GSA calculator rates, so pricing is transparent and consistent across clients.
- Time and materials keeps things flexible. You only pay for the work actually done, and scope can adapt as the project evolves.
- This structure works equally well for our institutional and government clients and our commercial ones.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://neutrinodesign.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devonjthomas
