Recipe for Success: An Entrepreneur’s Passion, Accountant’s Precision

Graham Furlong of Boulder ad agency, Made, named Top Young Pro of 2018

Lisa Ryckman //January 18, 2018//

Recipe for Success: An Entrepreneur’s Passion, Accountant’s Precision

Graham Furlong of Boulder ad agency, Made, named Top Young Pro of 2018

Lisa Ryckman //January 18, 2018//

GRAHAM FURLONG , 37

PRESIDENT/CHIEF STRATEGY OFFICER, MADE, BOULDER

Furlong has an entrepreneur’s passion and an accountant’s attention to detail, says colleague Xandra Ess.

“But most of all, he is an innovator and a disruptor, and he has applied those philosophies to both the advertising/marketing agency he co-founded and to the work he and his colleagues create for clients,” she says.

Furlong has helped create an agency that clients describe more as a business consultancy than an advertising agency, giving clients more engaging, more effective, more metrics-driven campaigns. His approach has resonated with clients including Lyft, Mozilla, New Balance, Harley-Davidson and Under Armour, helping to grow the startup’s client base from four to more than 50 and annual revenue to $25 million – a 192 percent compound annual growth rate over the past five years.

When Made lost its two largest clients in 2016, taking with them 60 percent of the agency’s revenue, “Graham saw an opportunity to use the event to help strengthen the agency,” Ess says. “He quickly pivoted the agency, optimizing its operational structure, recalibrating its client teams and refocusing its offerings to ensure that it would not face similar challenges in the future.”