At this stage in my career, it feels like I was born into it, to be honest, I seem to have been doing it forever.\u00a0 That said the reality is I was always a computer geek, writing BASIC programs on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 in my bedroom in the \u201980s developed into an ongoing love for tech which logically led to a career in IT.\u00a0 I gave up the programming very early on though and turned to the dark side when I got my first sales job and haven\u2019t looked back since.<\/p>\n
Davra actually spun out from a company I sold back in 2007. After the sale, two guys who had worked for me there approached me with an idea for a product asking if I could help with a business plan.\u00a0 Next thing I know I\u2019m CEO and back on planes raising money and selling software solutions again.<\/p>\n
Its been a great couple of years though, IoT (Internet of Things) is a seriously hot space right now and we\u2019ve been quietly playing in the market since 2010 building up a great platform and a serious reputation as the guys who know what they\u2019re doing. A couple of other platform companies have sold out early and been swallowed up by their acquirers, our goal is a bit more long term though, we\u2019ve had a few approaches but our plan is to be the first pure IoT IPO.<\/p>\n
Issac Newton said that he could only do what he did by \u2018standing on the shoulders of giants\u2019 and Davra are no different.\u00a0 We\u2019ve partnered with companies like Cisco & Intel to deliver our vision and you cannot put a price on the value that brings to a startup like us. Great technology is one thing but a big name like that takes away any risk the customer may feel about dealing with a small company.<\/p>\n
We\u2019ve also taken a unique view of our product and made it very pretty.\u00a0 With the exception of Apple, most tech companies haven\u2019t traditionally put much value into the design and user experience of their software, Davra has a Lead Design Engineer who is involved in every element of our development and even early-stage customer engagements so our platform has a serious amount of style as well as substance.\u00a0 Given that our typical customer is evolving from being IT-led to being Operational Tech led this has proven extremely successful for us.<\/p>\n
As I\u2019ve already mentioned IoT is on fire right now but that can sometimes cause more problems than it solves because customers see a lot of hype and no solid offerings out there.\u00a0 A lot of the big numbers floating around the market are ridiculous too, \u201c50 Billion devices\u201d, \u201c$19 Trillion Dollar value\u201d etc, etc, all that does is cause a flood of entries to the market most of which have no substance or value.<\/p>\n
Davra has taken a more pragmatic approach and just quietly delivered a solid solution and built some strong partnerships and satisfied customers.\u00a0 We actually have something to sell too which helps, you\u2019d be amazed at the number of analysts and journalists I\u2019ve spoken to who tell me that we\u2019re one of the few companies out there delivering something real today.<\/p>\n
In your life, you\u2019ll have lots of jobs but only one family, use your time wisely.<\/p>\n
Faster, Higher, Stronger.\u00a0 Well, that\u2019s actually the Olympic motto but it\u2019ll do just fine.<\/p>\n
Pulling together the team we\u2019ve managed to build is definitely our biggest achievement to date. As a small company getting the best talent can be a struggle, we don\u2019t have free lunches every day, gyms on-site, relax rooms and all those other perks that the bigger tech companies can offer but we do give people interesting work, a supportive environment and a visible career path as we grow.\u00a0 We also ensure that every developer gets to see their code in action as a real feature in a product and every sales guy gets to meet his customers. It\u2019s amazing how few companies can offer this and the best staff always want to see the fruits of what they do.\u00a0 No amount of foosball tables & jogging tracks can make up for this.<\/p>\n
Asking my core team to complete a 360 Feedback questionnaire on me and finding out I was a control freak wasn\u2019t a nice experience.\u00a0 Seemingly I tried to do everything in the early days and unsurprisingly didn\u2019t get much of it done right, so seeing that written down and realizing people didn\u2019t want to ask for my help because I\u2019d take over and do a half-ass job on it is a feeling I don\u2019t want to have again any time soon.\u00a0 Getting the balance right was good learning though, now I try to commit to a lot less and over-deliver whenever I can.<\/p>\n
Everything you plan to do will take twice as long and cost twice as much as you think, allow for this and deal with it.\u00a0 Any company that says it was an overnight success is just successful enough to hire a good PR team.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to think I do it by leading from the front.\u00a0 It\u2019s a bit of a clich\u00e9 but if you\u2019re not willing to get on a plane, spend time away from your family and do the footwork to build a new business yourself you can\u2019t expect other people to do it for you.<\/p>\n
My wife\u2019s wonderful Chorizo stew and a small clear soup that I once had in a Japanese restaurant in Paris, which no matter how hard I\u2019ve tried I have never been able to find since both are amazing. On the drink front I\u2019m afraid I\u2019m going to have to be a clich\u00e9d Irishman and say a nice pint of Guinness but only in Dublin, it doesn\u2019t travel well so anyone who hasn\u2019t had a pint here hasn\u2019t really tasted Guinness.<\/p>\n
Catch 22 by Joseph Heller, an absolute classic and a book I just keep going back to for some reason and my iPad.\u00a0 Unfortunately, technology has led to my bookshelves becoming increasingly bare although my wife balances this out by steadfastly refusing to read on any type of screen. I think she single-handedly keeps Amazon in business.<\/p>\n
Obscure one this considering he died 20 years before I was born but George Bernard Shaw was the ultimate innovator.\u00a0 He was a poet, a playwright, a scientist, an economist and one of the greatest minds ever to come out of Ireland.\u00a0 He not only founded the London School of Economics but was also the only man ever to have won both a Nobel Prize and an Oscar (he wrote the screenplay for \u2018My Fair Lady\u2019 which was based on his book Pygmalion) so his ability to adapt and change to suit his audience was amazing.<\/p>\n
I discovered skiing a couple of years ago and it\u2019s the only thing that makes me wish I were 30 years younger. I can\u2019t believe I spent so much of my life not doing it.<\/p>\n
The BBC ran a really interesting article on Monday about a new app from the Samaritans that monitors social media feeds for suicide warnings. It’s great to see technology being used in such a creative way to deal with such a serious social issue.\u00a0 Hats off to the Samaritans for continuing to do such great work.<\/p>\n
The next step for Davra is to build our global presence. We\u2019ve conquered Europe and the US but that leaves about 70% of the world’s population who don\u2019t have a Davra office nearby. The Internet of Things isn\u2019t waiting around you know!<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Connect with Paul Glynn<\/a> on LinkedIn and follow Davra<\/a> to stay up to date!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" How did you get into the tech industry? At this stage in my career, it feels like I was born into it, to be honest, I seem to have been doing it forever.\u00a0 That said the reality is I was always a computer geek, writing BASIC programs on the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64 in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[62,1587,82,245,1589,108,481,53,531,535,538,1588,430,541,515,191,520,101,231,1586],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davra.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}