Mike Psenka often stays up until 2 a.m. writing computer software, long after his four children have gone to bed.

It's a passion for the Princeton University graduate with a degree in mechanical and aerospace engineering - a passion that led him at age 23 to start a database software company in the back room of the Charleston home he rented with his wife, Tam.

"It was hungry," he recalled of his time as a struggling startup. "You learn. You take risks. You make mistakes and it costs you your paycheck."

But with risk often comes reward. Now 39, Psenka is founder and CEO of eThority, a Charleston-based national software development company with 20 employees and an aggressive growth plan.

What does that mean for eThority? "I would say an aggressive growth plan is 40%," Psenka said.

The company develops computer software that helps businesses manage, track and report data. The anticipated growth comes on the heels of a new database program Psenka affectionately compares to a vehicle because of its ease of use. Along with his passion for programming, Psenka also has passion for disguising the technology in his products.

"It can't just be user-friendly; it has to be user-obvious," he said. "Think about a browser. ...No one ever trained you to use a browser. Consumer electronics, automobile companies, appliances, they all get it, but, for some reason, software companies force you to read a manual.

"Technologists have a tendency to think the average user wants to know (a high) level of detail. ...In the background, these guys are saying, 'Dude, awesome, nice feature,'" Psenka said. "But sometimes there are too many features and you can't find the print button."

Starting out again
A Chicago native, Psenka moved to Charleston in 1992 as his wife enrolled at the Medical University of South Carolina. The couple never left.

Psenka left his job at Price Waterhouse and started a company that developed database software for health care companies.

He didn't set out to reinvent the wheel; he just wanted to make it faster.

A breadth of similar software was on the market, much of it very advanced and outfitted with a plethora of features. But Psenka continually heard complaints that the programs were difficult to use.

"(The software would) take you anywhere, just like a large jet airplane. But like a large jet airplane, they took a trained pilot to access," he said.

Psenka's latest product can travel, in terms of features and marketability. His first product catered to health care. He first expanded into the higher education and government markets, and, in January, he expanded into the private sector with a new "business intelligence" product.

eThority's status as a niche product is long gone.

"In some ways, it's like starting out all over again," Psenka said.

Keeping it simple
Psenka gets noticeably excited when demonstrating his program's features, showing how to create automatic updates of data that will be e-mailed to whomever the user chooses, whenever the user chooses.

The capabilities for data analysis are vast: With a few mouse clicks, Psenka lists the highest-paid Chicago Cubs players in the team's history and measures one of Hank Aaron's seasons against the stats of all players of every other season in Major League Baseball history. Users can manage, track, report and analyze any data they add to the system.

But it's the simple things that really please Psenka.

"I get a charge out of taking something really complex and putting a nonuser in front of it and having them tell me what's going on," Psenka said. "The software will tell you what to do."

In that sense, graphic elements are as important as the functionality of the software.

"How do you engage somebody in the technology?" he asked. "Human beings are aesthetic creatures. Packaging is important."

So Psenka's product is visually compelling. Users can make data boxes pulsate when they appear on the screen, for example. And his latest software gives users control over the visual animations.

Creating those graphics and animation features and options has become more than just his 9-to-5 job. It's like a hobby, and the programming consumes his free time.

"I handle the day-to-day business operations during business hours, go home, eat, play with the kids," he said. "Then I write programs. From 9 p.m. to 2 a.m., that's when I'm programming."