Sailing into the unknown

For the last 15 years, I have been involved with DevFacto . David Cronin , Ransel Lopez , and I founded the company over rum and pizza during a meeting at my townhouse in Edmonton. That cold day in March started a love story that has spanned a decade and a half. There we were three geeks with no company management experience and no sales experience starting a consulting business during the worst economic downturn in recent history.

Inexperience, foolishness, and exuberance can be synonyms. If we knew the road ahead, we likely would have paused and continued with our jobs. But that day, we decided to sail into the unknown. Our decision changed our lives and that of many others.

Our business premise was simple – take care of our employees so they can in turn take care of our clients. This was the opposite of the management wisdom at the time. We shouted this premise loud and clear, and it resonated with many of the best developers, architects, and consultants that I’ve known. We built a great team. We understood that we owed our success to our employees, not to our management skills or business relationships since we had none.

DevFacto quickly gained traction in the marketplace and became one of the premier consulting companies in Alberta. We opened offices in Regina, Calgary, and Toronto. We worked with clients in Canada, US, Bahrain, and the UK. We grew to over 160 consultants, landed on the fastest growing company lists in Alberta and Canada for seven years in a row, we even topped the Alberta list in 2010. We won over 30 awards for growth, employee culture/happiness, best managed company, and for our solutions.

We built amazing solutions for clients as diverse as Enbridge, ASEBP, CPC, PCL, Edmonton Oilers, Alberta Blue Cross, Service Alberta, Canadian Western Bank, PetroSkills, Alberta Health and many others.

I vividly remember our corporate trips to Vegas and Mexico. The happiness and excitement in our employees and their families as we boarded the plane and arrived at our destination. They were all excited to be part of a company that valued them. Most had scars from previous organizations. They told me that DevFacto felt different, was different. David and I worked hard to make sure that it remained that way. Our attrition was so low that recruitment companies started partnering with us, trying to understand why our employees were so loyal. Why more money didn’t sway them.

I have worked incessantly to make DevFacto successful. I have been late to family dinners, birthday parties, I have worked every holiday I took for the last 15 years. I have not even bothered to turn on the out of office message because I was always on, always connected. I have loved every minute and managed to somehow find balance in my life. DevFacto and its employees have given me more than they can ever imagine, thank you to everyone who has been affiliated as a client, employees, supplier, or contractor.

December 22nd marked my last day as a stakeholder of DevFacto Technologies. I led the organization as CEO from its inception until September 2020. I stayed as a shareholder afterwards, helping David Cronin transition to CEO, supporting the organization behind the scenes. I’m excited about what’s next for DevFacto but that story will be told by others when the time is right!

I’m now focused on Sparrow Connected . An internal communication platform that I have led as CEO for the last two and a half years. I’m excited about what Sparrow has become and its potential in the years ahead. We have an amazing team, amazing clients, amazing investors and are in the unique position to be able to change the world. I once again set my sails into the unknown, I hope to see you in my new journey!