Business Banking Customer Spotlight: Process Curiosity
When someone approaches Blake Wigdahl with an idea for a 45-foot monkey head or interactive teeth that teach kids how to floss, he doesn’t get hung up on concerns about feasibility or budget constraints. For Wigdahl, it’s all about possibility.
“We want to stay continuously curious,” says Wigdahl, founder and CEO of Process Curiosity. “When somebody comes to us and says, ‘Hey, I’ve got this idea. Has this ever been done?’ We sit down with them. We co-create, we co-design, we figure out how to achieve those sorts of things.”
That philosophy of saying “yes” to new challenges has driven Process Curiosity’s growth from a small startup to a thriving company. And when it came time to find a banking partner, Wigdahl needed someone who would approach his business with the same openness to possibility.
Building Transformative Experiences
Process Curiosity is an experiential planning, design and fabrication company that works with cultural institutions, museums, and science centers to create immersive and interactive experiences.
What started in a basement seven years ago has grown into a team of 30 consultants, designers, engineers and fabricators—all dedicated to play. Today, they work out of a 47,000-square-foot facility in North Salt Lake.
The work is as diverse as their clients’ imaginations. One project might involve creating an interactive dentistry exhibit teaching kids about brushing, flossing, and what happens at the dentist’s office. Another could be a temporary international exhibition combining physical elements with digital experiences.
“Sometimes we’re helping somebody figure out how to run their museum or their operation better. At other times, we’re thinking about what might be possible 10 years down the road for them.”
Process Curiosity handles everything in-house, where their team figures out how to build and 3D model each project they work on. The company’s headquarters include a wood and metal shop where skilled fabricators, sculptors and artisans create the parts.
“All of them are one of a kind,” Wigdahl says. “Everything is a unique, custom, sculptural piece for our clients.” Creating tactile, analog features for powerful learning environments is the main focus of the business, along with bringing imaginations to life.
Banking on Possibility
As Process Curiosity approached what Wigdahl describes as “the knee of the curve” of his company’s exponential growth, he knew they needed something they’d never had before.
“What we had in the past was a bank account, but we didn’t have a banking relationship,” Wigdahl says. “As we started to move on the growth of our company, we really needed somebody to come alongside us and help us take our business to the next level.”
Wigdahl was looking for more than just a place to park funds. He needed a partner who could provide strategic guidance before problems arose; someone who could support Process Curiosity’s trajectory toward becoming a leader in experiential design.
“I was interviewing banks to find the right relationship,” Wigdahl says. “Some were crickets. Some responded and sort of showed up semi-interested.” Then he sent an email to First Utah Bank at 4:30 p.m. on a Friday afternoon and assumed he would hear back after the weekend.
“Before I even got home, there was an email that said, ‘Hey, can we come meet you?’ It was from the President and CEO,” he says. “Since the day we met them, First Utah Bank has come alongside with what we are. Curiosity is about exploring what is possible. And they are the most curious people that we’ve met.”
A Relationship Based on Curiosity
From that first meeting, First Utah Bank approached Process Curiosity differently than the other institutions Wigdahl had interviewed. Instead of sending over a list of documents to fill out, the bank’s team toured the facility, asked questions about the company’s vision, and started building a relationship.
“They came on that first day and asked a lot of questions about what we had given them,” Wigdahl says. “They said, ‘You know, it would really be great somewhere along the arc of your journey to bring on a CFO.’ We took that advice immediately and hired a fractional CFO. And that has been just great advice that we’ve been able to utilize right out of the gate from them.”
This advisory approach was exactly what Wigdahl had been looking for. Rather than waiting for Process Curiosity to encounter challenges, First Utah Bank helped them identify opportunities to strengthen their operations in a proactive way.
Tools and Advice Working Together
In their first 90 days working with First Utah Bank, Process Curiosity made significant operational improvements that changed how the company functioned.
“The impact they had in just the first 90 days was helping us move from a bank account to a treasury management security for our systems,” Wigdahl says. The bank helped them establish better processes for working with clients and built more robust financial infrastructure.
“So it’s not just the tools that are excellent and fantastic to make us feel safe about how we can grow our business, but it’s also about the advice,” Wigdahl says.
The three-legged stool of business, as Wigdahl calls it, requires a lawyer, an accountant, and a bank. All three need to be founded on good relationships when facing rapid growth. “A lot of people see this business as following a straight line of growth, but in reality it’s actually exponential,” he says.
This kind of development requires planning and support systems that can scale alongside the business. “We need somebody to come along and support us as we go up that curve and grow to create transformative learning experiences for the world,” Wigdahl says.
Shared Values Drive Success
What makes this partnership work is the alignment between how Process Curiosity approaches their business and how First Utah Bank approaches banking. For a company that builds its net worth through one-of-a-kind experiences for museums and science centers across North America, having a bank that asks “what’s possible?” instead of “what’s the risk?” changes everything.
The curiosity that drives Process Curiosity’s creative work requires the same openness from their financial partner. When Wigdahl and his team are pushing boundaries and solving problems in entirely new ways, they need a banking relationship that thinks about possibilities right alongside them—which is what they found in First Utah Bank.
Building the Future Together
Today, Wigdahl’s team is continuing to expand their work. They’re building everything from early learning spaces, to soccer experiences that combine physical and digital interactivity. Through it all, they have a banking partner who is actively redefining what’s possible.
For Process Curiosity, finding the right banking relationship meant finding partners who understood that the process matters as much as the result. It meant working with people who are as curious about what’s next as they are about what’s going on right now.
As Wigdahl puts it: “So if you’re ready to experiment, explore and break a few things in the name of progress, let’s play.”