"Departs tech to operate family's Colombian coffee company"

I have occasionally seen headlines such as the above but never thought I would be the subject matter. As it turns out, that is exactly what has happened in my life. The last few years have been very challenging yet it has led me to a place I had least expected. I have come to my own fork in the road and that "road less traveled" is my next path it seems.

Last week was my final week at the Chamberlain Group, who had acquired our Tend Insights vision analytics and hardware "late-stage" start-up about a year ago. Thank you to Herman Yau, his family and the wonderful crew at Tend offices in Fremont, CA for an amazing 7 years. Thank you also to the Chamberlain team for their warm welcome to the talented Tend group. We were a classic start-up, the future was unclear and moutains ahead tall and trecherous. In the end, we got it done. If you have been there and done that, you know how it can be. The good, the bad and the ugly. Yet that story had a happy ending all things considered.

When I first met Herman, the company was not yet branded Tend Insights (thank you Tracy Yau for the amazing rebrand work). At that time, Herman and team where doing solid B2B work with the likes of British Telecom, Singtel and others - yet the consumer business had yet to emerge. We had a lot to learn, with even more to accomplish. Many CES shows, retail pitches, company cookouts in the back alley (thanks Stanley!) and thousands of flight hours later the company emerged a mature actor at the gateway to the Silicon Valley. Today that same dynamite team is helping the Chamberlain Group deliver innovative video and AI access solutions globally across residential and commercial environments. They are helping to open garage doors for Amazon In-Garage-Delivery, enable value to multi-family dwellings and much more. If you own or rent a home, see if you have a Chamberlain or Liftmaster garage door opener in the garage, download MyQ app and see the new features it delivers! OK that is my last Chamberlain sales presentation. :) But really MyQ is pretty cool.

For my part it, after things settled from the aquisition, it was time to go. I am designed to (try to) create, accelerate and grow ideas more so than manage existing processes. To that end, I have found the opportunity to lead my family's coffee company, El Parche Coffee, which operates between the beautiful mountains of Colombia and the US. In Colombia we have our own coffee farms and also source from our friends and neighbors. We hand-harvest our coffee fruit, dry in the mountain sun, process the green coffee, roast in small batches and ship direct to a growing base of B2B and consumers. Along the way we support a group of more than 1,600 family farmers in our collective. While the family has been in the coffee value-chain in Colombia for decades, we are just now bringing that story to the US. El Parche Coffee is a complete "origin-production" story which is frankly "un-common" in a world of local roasters. We are doing things differently because we see things from a different perspective. The photo above is from a recent visit to Colombia. That view helps the perspective!

We named the company El Parche as it is a Colombian term for "my friends, my crew, my posse, or my squad" - so to speak. El parche is that group of friends that will always be there for you. That, to us, is El Parche Coffee - www.ElParcheCoffee.com

El Parche has two coffee brands we operate under that umbrella, each with very different personalities and audiences - but always containing the finest mountain coffee inside the bag. Geek Grind Coffee www.GeekGrindCoffee.com has exceeded our expectations as to the appeal of what was designed to be a niche launch. There IS a little geek in all of us it seems! We have a full product line under the Geek Grind Coffee brand ranging from fresh whole bean coffee blends to K-Cups. We serve both consumers direct and a growing base of cafes and retail locations. Our second brand is Pure Canopy www.purecanopy.com which works to surface the efforts we are making in supporting women-in-coffee (from farm to production management at origin) as well as supporting rainforest survival and protection.

So as they say, when one door closes another door opens and this one has a mountain view. Please contact me to learn more or if you want to visit Colombia with us sometime! When you go to Colombia with El Parche, you go with family. I feel very grateful to have this opportunity and responsibility. My door is open too! I am happy to discuss how El Parche can deliver value to you or your projects.

In a world which more and more seems designed to drive us apart, I have seen first-hand how coffee can still bring us together. - If El Parche Coffee can deliver success anywhere, my hope is that it deliver it there. - Patrick

ask@ElParcheCoffee