About
Threshmark is a Virginia limited liability company based in Northern Virginia and the DC metro area. When you hire us, you work with the people who do the work. No account manager between you and the engagement. No bench of juniors learning on your budget. No handoff to someone you’ve never met.
How we split the work
Every engagement runs on two tracks, and they run at the same time.
The advisory track starts with the people and the process. What is actually happening here? Where does the work slow down? What sounds reasonable on paper but falls apart on a Tuesday?
The build track starts with the systems. What can be simplified, what should be automated, what needs building, and what should probably be left alone.
Both tracks are willing to reach the same conclusion when it’s true: this isn’t worth doing. That occasionally costs us work. It has never cost a client more than the work itself would have.
Advisory
Someone sits with your team, works out where the hours are going, and writes the document that says what to do about it.
We’ll ask the same question four different ways until the real answer comes out, and we’ll put the awkward finding in writing rather than leave it in the room.
Build
Automations, integrations, and custom software, with the security work done as it is built rather than bolted on afterward.
Whoever builds a system writes its handover documentation, on the theory that anything we cannot explain to your office manager is not finished.
What we hold to
If the honest answer costs us the engagement, we give you the honest answer anyway. Everything else comes after that.
Some businesses don’t need what we sell. Sometimes the best thing we can do is say so before you spend money on a project that shouldn’t have started. That’s cheaper for everyone.
Every system, automation, and decision has a written trail. Your team should understand what exists, how it works, and why it was done that way, including after we are gone.
You get a written account of what data a system touches and where it travels before it goes live. Where the work needs us to have access, we name it, scope it to that work, and end it when the work ends.
If we have a commercial relationship with a vendor, whether a partnership, a reseller agreement, or a referral fee, we’ll tell you before you make a decision.
The people who make the recommendation are the people who have to stand behind it.
Some problems need specialized expertise. When they do, we’ll say so, and we’ll bring in the right person rather than pretending one firm can do everything.
You’ll know who’s involved, why they’re involved, and what they’re responsible for.
Where we come from
Most of it spent in places where a system going wrong was somebody else’s very bad day. Small business work is lower stakes than that. The habits carry over anyway.
Systems that had to work the first time, in conditions nobody scheduled. That’s where the preference for simple and tested comes from.
Work at the highest levels of government, where discretion is part of the job description and nothing ships unverified.
Small teams expected to perform far past their headcount. That’s the whole idea this company is built on.
Places where who can see what is the first question asked about a system, not the last. It’s why we scope access before we design features.
Building software in regulated finance, on the assumption that an auditor eventually reads everything you wrote.
Engineering where the review takes longer than the work, and where the reasons for that are good ones.
Tell us what’s frustrating you, what’s taking too long, or what you wish worked better. We’ll ask a few questions, give you a straight answer, and tell you whether we think we can help. No sales pitch. No giant proposal. Just a useful conversation.
