LEWISTON — New tech start-up Don’t Panic Consulting is looking to develop software that ties together a dozen back-end business functions — social media, payroll, sales, web maintenance — to save clients money and ultimately boost revenues.

Its name is inspired by the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.” Its initial target is ski resorts. And for now, home base for the seven-person operation is an office within the Lewiston-Auburn Economic Growth Council space on Lisbon Street.

“We’re all a bunch of geeks,” said CEO and co-founder Justin Donnaruma. “We love sci-fi, we love tech. (The name) just fit. That’s kind of the culture we want: Don’t panic, we’re here, we’ll take care of you, we’ll do our best not to let you down.”

Donnaruma, 29, who grew up in Bethel and lives in Sabattus, met co-founder Richard Hooper when both worked at Carbonite.

Their cloud-based software, which they’ve named the Eden Business Suite, is in development. Donnaruma is hoping to have it ready for testing by year’s end.

He said the ski industry is a natural to start with because it has so many facets: food and beverage sales, both of the quick and sit-down variety, ticket sales, rentals and repairs, real estate, payroll, human resources. 

“You basically have every system that we could think about building,” Donnaruma said. “That gives us a great test bed to start working with some local ski resorts and building a system specific to them that we can then market to the rest.”

He believes channeling all of that through a single source will save companies money, up to 30 to 40 percent based on early projections, and lead to more savvy decisions.

“This is another reason why ski resorts are great: They have so many disparate systems. Tickets doesn’t know what retail does, retail doesn’t know what food and beverage does,” Donnaruma said. “If the restaurants understand that ticket sales are up so there’s more people on the mountain, they can look at it, ‘What’s our highest-margin product?’, discount it (and drive more sales). You can easily in real time during the day adjust pricing to reflect what’s going on or through an electronic billboard (announce), ‘Hey, special on wings.'”

The Eden software would be sold as a subscription service with phone support from Don’t Panic. 

He’d like the company to grow “as rapidly as possible. Our big thing is we need engineers to grow,” Donnaruma said. “There’s so many pieces of the software we can hand off to one- and two-person teams.”

They signed a six-month lease and moved into the LAEGC office last week. Donnaruma is pursuing more investors, applying for Maine Technology Institute seed grants and researching state and federal start-up help.

He’s also exploring other sites in Lewiston to expand once the company outgrows its new space.

“I was very impressed with the skill set that Justin and his team has put together and their ability to inspire confidence in investors (who) came to the table and got them launched,” LAEGC President John Holden said Tuesday. “It’s an exciting opportunity given some other higher-tech, creative companies in Lewiston, to start to build that cluster.”

He pointed to companies such as aizoOn, Anchour Marketing and at least one other “soon-to-be-announced” creative technology newcomer in Lewiston.

“We want to turn the business intelligence market on its head,” Donnaruma said. “I’m ecstatic. I’ve been wanting to build this kind of software for years. I’ve found the right people and now I get to make it happen.”

[email protected]