Our Story
The Heartwood Story
We named Heartwood on a road trip. My wife and I were driving home from a family vacation, tossing around names for hours, and when “Heartwood” came up, it resonated immediately. It captured everything I wanted this company to be.
The heart is about how we care. One of our original taglines was “we care more than makes sense on paper” — and that’s still true. The heart in Heartwood represents choosing projects that demonstrate real care for people and the world around us. Not care as a marketing strategy. Care as a conviction.
Then there’s the wood. Heartwood is the hardest part of a tree — the dense inner core that endures through storms, weathering, and time. When everything else breaks down, the heartwood is what lasts. Over years of building software at places like YouVersion and Planning Center, I learned that software has to be that way too. It can’t be brittle or fragile. It needs to be meaningful in its impact, but also stable, secure, and built for longevity. Software that’s still standing years from now, not just useful in the moment.
That combination — deep care and enduring craft — is what we’re building toward every day.
The long road here
I didn’t plan to start an agency. For 25 years, I built software. I wrote code for energy startups and defense contractors. I helped build Bible.com into a platform serving millions of daily users. I led engineering teams at YouVersion — overseeing search, personalization, and content partnerships for a Bible app with over 500 million downloads. I managed a $12 billion annual donation platform at Planning Center, leading teams that handled fraud detection and trust at scale.
Along the way, I spent 13 years as a youth pastor. That season shaped me more than any engineering role. It taught me to listen before I solve, to care about the person in front of me more than the problem on the screen, and to lead with patience even when the pressure says otherwise.
When my role at Planning Center ended unexpectedly, I faced a choice. I could chase another corporate job. Or I could take 25 years of experience — the technical skill, the leadership instinct, the pastoral care — and invest it in something I’d been quietly dreaming about for a long time.
I chose the dream. And doors started opening.
Friends referred work. Generous leaders entrusted me with high-stakes projects during a deeply uncertain season. I hired people from my network who were between opportunities — talented developers who needed a chance and were willing to bet on something new alongside me.
Heartwood wasn’t born from a polished business plan. It was born from calling. From the conviction that there are ideas sitting in notebooks and pitch decks all over the world — meaningful ideas that never get built because the person carrying them doesn’t have the team, the expertise, or someone who believes in the mission as much as they do.
We exist to be that someone.
We were built to count, as water is made to run downhill. We are placed in a specific context to count in ways no one else does. That is our destiny.
We believe that. We believe every meaningful idea, every impulse to lift someone up, every mission that keeps a founder awake at night comes from somewhere deeper than ambition. You don’t have to share our faith to share our table. If the work you’re doing is good, we want to be part of it.
A different kind of agency
For years, I was on the other side of the agency model. I hired agencies, and honestly, I didn’t trust most of them. The relationship felt transactional: you pay them, they build the thing, and then they disappear. They never really understood our culture or our mission.
Stepping into Heartwood as an agency felt strange at first — until I realized I didn’t have to repeat that model. I could build something where we’re just as invested in your idea as you are. Where every project is a partnership, not a transaction. Where we say no to most opportunities so we can say a deep, committed yes to the right ones.
Better one handful with peace than two handfuls with toil and chasing after the wind.
We don’t chase the wind. We choose carefully. We invest deeply. And we build things that last.
What you do in the present — by painting, preaching, singing, sewing, praying, teaching, building hospitals, digging wells, campaigning for justice, writing poems, caring for the needy, loving your neighbor as yourself — will last into God’s future.
We build software with that conviction. Not just for the launch. For what lasts.
