Some things really do get believed into existence.
My dad (Wayne L. Smith II), brother (Colin Smith), and I started ATIS from scratch in late 2012. I will never forget sitting in my basement and filing the articles of organization. A vision. Weekly Sunday morning visits on my parents’ porch. And a bet that the elevator inspection industry was broken.
12 years later and 350+ team members across the US and Canada. The leader in elevator inspections, consulting, and managed services.
None of that obviously happens without the people who saw something in us before the proof existed. My Dad was the first to believe — the founding backer who made the bet when it mattered most. Soon after came support from Doss Cunningham, who was well on his way to becoming one of the most successful entrepreneurs on the planet. Then came a good friend and mentor Jerry Kent; an entrepreneur with a legacy of building incredibly large and incredibly great companies that is simply unprecedented.
Now Tom St. Geme / Thompson Street Capital Partners and Team have the baton — and what they are doing with Jim Fox and the current team is taking ATIS to a level we only dreamed about on that porch.
That continuity is rare and great companies don’t just get built once. They get rebuilt, elevated, and handed forward by people who respect what came before and have the vision to see what comes next.
But through every chapter — the real story is the hundreds of team members who show up, buy in, and carry the mission forward. Who build with us, not for us.
To everyone who was part of ATIS — past and present — thank you. What we built together was real. What’s being built now is something special.