Bradley Ford and Darren George know their business. One is a former city manager. The other is an HR executive. They know their market, the problem they're solving and where their products fit. They can easily tell you about the dinner that led them to work together.
But they were also in the sprint of building a company and preparing to launch City Compensation, the flagship software from Public Sector Talent Analytics. When you're that close to the work, it can be hard to take five steps back and explain why you're doing it.
Their website reflected that. They had a placeholder up. My job was to help them tell the bigger story for the first part of their About page.
BEFORE
The original About page hero
At first, we talked about the product. I needed the nitty gritty. As an outsider, I had to understand City Compensation well enough to explain it to insiders: city managers, HR leaders and county administrators making high-stakes hiring and compensation decisions. I learned how they traditionally get their data, why compensation studies can take more than a year to complete, and what PSTA was building instead.
Once I understood the core of the business, I could get more conversational.
Bradley had spent more than two decades in city government and started his career as a data analyst. Clearly, this was a guy who had a view on data. So I asked him: What's your philosophy on data?
His answer was simple: Data is better than gut.
Why?
That question got us somewhere more interesting.
Bradley told me how he'd started building his own compensation spreadsheets when the information he needed wasn't available. Eventually, colleagues from other cities began calling him for help because, as he put it, they knew he'd "done the homework."
AFTER
The new About page hero
With Darren, I kept pushing on a different question: Why did this matter to him?
Making public-sector hiring faster, easier and less expensive is a strong business proposition. But it wasn't the whole reason Darren cared. Public service has been important throughout his life. What he ultimately wanted was to help local governments attract great people because great people build stronger communities.
Those conversations changed the direction of the copy.
I initially thought City Compensation would be the center of the story. It was the product preparing to launch and had the clearest problem to solve. But PSTA plans to build more than one product. Building the company's story around its first one would make the messaging obsolete as the business grew.
The larger story was already sitting in the interview.
PSTA wasn't simply building better compensation software. Bradley and Darren were bringing together two careers, one rooted in public-sector data and leadership and the other in talent strategy, around a shared belief: local governments need better tools to recruit, retain and develop the people their communities depend on.
From story to website
The interviews gave me the foundation for a larger company narrative. I organized the proposed About page to introduce PSTA's purpose, establish its credibility, connect that story to its first product, and give each founder a distinct voice.
Here's how the content came together:
Through my interviews with Bradley and Darren, I heard the origin story they often tell about PSTA. But I also wanted to understand what drove each of them. Why did they care about this work? What had their years in local government and human resources taught them?
Those conversations helped me connect the company's beginnings to a larger mission and bring more of each founder's perspective into their individual profiles.
Here are a few excerpts from the proposed website copy:
SELECTED WRITING · COMPANY ORIGIN
Why we built PSTA
Bradley Ford spent years in local government making high-stakes compensation and workforce decisions with not enough data. Like many city managers, he relied on expensive compensation studies, spreadsheets, and phone calls to peer cities. When those resources weren't enough, he started gathering data himself. What began as Excel spreadsheets soon became a trusted resource. Colleagues across Texas started calling Bradley for his spreadsheets because they knew he'd done the homework.
When Bradley partnered with Darren George, they saw an opportunity to build something bigger. Instead of creating another static report, they set out to build software that could bring together current compensation data, meaningful context, and the real-world factors public-sector leaders and HR professionals consider every day. The result was Public Sector Talent Analytics, a company built to help local governments make smarter compensation and talent decisions.
SELECTED WRITING · FOUNDER PROFILE
Darren George
Co-Founder | HR Executive & Talent Strategist
Darren George believes stronger communities begin with exceptional public servants. Throughout his career, he has helped organizations build stronger teams by advising executives on compensation, organizational design, and long-term workforce strategy.
As a trusted HR leader, Darren saw that better talent decisions require more than experience. They require timely information, practical context, and the confidence to act. That perspective led him to partner with Bradley Ford to build Public Sector Talent Analytics.