Paul Stillmank
Founder and CEO
7Summits
Milwaukee
Employees: 128
Paul Stillmank recognized early on that social media would change the way people work.
Founded in 2009, 7Summits joins together collaborative and digital interactions, essentially creating entire online communities for businesses. These communities provide clients with meaningful data to help them run things more smoothly and help them see things that were once invisible in siloed environments, scattered throughout various systems.
“Our whole mission is we’re creating these online community experiences — and community is essential to that — that really transform the companies we work with,” Stillmank said.
Before starting 7Summits, Stillmank spent 10 years in new product development before spending another decade in the consulting and agency world. After that, he worked for a couple years at ManpowerGroup. He then saw a report that prognosticated a $4 billion market for social media.
Looking beyond that emerging market, Stillmank thought about how a generation growing up with social media will want to work once they enter the workforce. He started thinking about interactions among customers, employees and others, and how these technological changes would alter them.
Stillmank has clear goals for 7Summits moving forward, and is working to shape the company in a way to meet them. For instance, he wants 7Summits to be the choice among Fortune 1000 companies for the type of service it provides. So Stillmark has instilled certain structures and processes in his firm to ensure it meets the standards these companies seek in such a firm.
“We’re working to make sure we’re amplifying who we are in the market,” he said.
