BCycle
What: Leading bike-share in the USA
Uniqueness: First intelligent-free standing kiosk. No wires, not even a power cord
Challenges to Overcome: Creating a fast, reliable, secure & maintainable system that could run without hardwired power or hardwired Internet
It wasn’t so easy: No way typical best practices, such as web services & XML, would ever be fast enough so we had to roll our own. Supporting millions of trips with almost instantaneous response throughout the system on 3G and solar really tested what could be done.
10-4
What: First commercial transportation marketplace
Uniqueness: Allowed carriers, shipping companies & brokers to electronically reserve trucks, negotiate price, sign contracts via a completely automated system
Challenges to Overcome: Most of the small carriers in the world weren’t using any sophisticated system to manage their fleets. We had to build the company from the ground up for investors. I served as employee #1, the CEO, CTO, CIO and janitor all rolled into one. Not to mention, integrating new tech with legacy tech was much harder than we thought.
It wasn’t so easy: Incumbents didn’t like us disrupting their industry and their highly profitable legacy systems (I have the cease and desist order to prove it.)
Amadeus Consulting
What: Custom Software Development / Custom Technology Solutions. Successful large-scale custom application solutions for the web, cloud and mobile devices.
Uniqueness: Largest CSD company in Boulder, CO with a great culture and ability to do really hard tech, no matter the platform
Challenges to Overcome: Ever-changing technical landscape. Building first of kind software for tech giants.
It wasn’t so easy: Running 200 projects a year with less than 100 people. Sure some projects were for Serial Entrepreneurs, but others were for giants like Google
Extra: Acquired by Exadel in late 2016
Machine Learning
What: Worked with an American multinational technology company that is the leading expert in Internet-related services and products. Helped to learn how computers understand how humans “feel” about products.
Uniqueness: Early adopter of machine learning tech on a very large scale
Challenges to Overcome: All sorts of issues with parsing product reviews, including sarcasm which computers have a hard time with. Even more annoying was the use of emojis
It wasn’t so easy: Working a large tech company sounds great, and mostly it is, but sometimes getting the simplest thing done can take forever
Fanatics
What: Massive eCommerce System
Uniqueness: Fanatics is the industry leader of sports memorabilia and authentic licencenned apparel. They run hundreds of white labeled sites for almost every team in sports.
Challenges to Overcome: With estimated revenues well over $2 Billion scaling is everything. I remember when they were shipping items from one of the owners garage so growing so fast is technically challenging because technology always has to keep up with the growing demand and all the new features required to support new business lines.
It wasn’t so easy: Constantly upgrading technology is one thing but do it while keeping a company who is generating ~2 Billion in sales is a whole different thing. One hour of down time could be millions of dollars in lost revenue.
Planet Outdoors
What: E-commerce for outdoor gear. Company’s 1st employee. Grew company to 100 people and millions of dollars in e-commerce within one year.
Uniqueness: E-commerce platform before e-commerce platforms existed. First company to interface with UPS in that packing slips could be printed remotely over the internet. Featured in UPS 1st Annual report.
Challenges to Overcome: Scaling before scaling was a thing. Writing ISAPI IIS plugins.
It wasn’t so easy: Everything back then had to be code by hand. There were no great open source libraries or platforms that could be leveraged, no easy way to rapidly scale machines or for that matter serve content at scale.
Extra: Acquired by MVP.com in late 2001
Fare
What: Competitor to Uber with more driver and customer features.
Uniqueness: Beat Uber to several advanced features that are really important to drivers and customers including real trip scheduling, preferred drivers, etc.
Challenges to Overcome: Lots of complex technology to include a mobile device including real-time mapping, driver background check, fraud detection.
It wasn’t so easy: It is really hard to compete with the world’s best funding company especially when you have less than a total of 50 people working in your company. Pretty sure Uber spent more on snacks that our entire company budget.
Testimonials
“John is always thinking about the direction technology is headed and how to plot a course through uncharted territory. While many leaders in technology focus on what can and can’t be done today (with an emphasis on can’t), John continually looks to what will be possible tomorrow and how to position a company (his company or a client’s company) to take advantage of the future possibilities.”
“I’ve worked with John over the years on a number of projects. John has always been a gentleman. He’s professional, thorough and a pleasure to work with. Our experiences with Amadeus and John have always been extremely positive.”
“John and his company Amadeus have really helped us accomplish our business goals. He has a very talented core of .net developers who are very savvy with web development. I highly recommend John and his staff to any company that is looking for a very competent web development consulting firm.”