This blog has taken a bit of a battering these last few years and it’s yet again set for a small evolution as I focus my daily energy on the Curvium business.
IPEngineer.net started off as a networking focussed journal of sorts and turned into something else. Some of that was from naivety and some of it was just good luck and fortune.
The change from IPEngineer.net to Dave.dev reflected a moment in my life where I felt more of a systems developer than a networking person, and I’m at another juncture in my life. I’ve come to accept, I’m more a business person now, with a strong software and networking background. But, in the name of sanity, dave.dev shall remain as the home of these rants because I also know time and energy management is key to survival and success. Each day I have a pot of coins to spend. Some of those coins are decisions that need to be made, hours spent, what to spend money on and how to disconnect to stay sane. Running a business means spending those coins well.
Curvium.com
Curvium Group Limited is a manifestation of the last two decades of experience. It’s a huge bet, but not one made in a naive lottery sense. It is my next natural step and I am eager to deliver services to our current customers and potential new ones. It’s happening and very real.
Computer networks and application communication is a huge topic, one requiring deep software and networking knowledge. It’s high time that a company exists that can design, implement, sell, maintain and consult on this deep technology stack, giving the bigger companies a run for their money. I don’t have a lavish lifestyle and don’t care about having a Ferrari either. It’s not about the money, because I can earn a good enough salary from being employed, but it’s about doing a good job end-to-end and being in control of the journey.
For anyone who’s been down this path before, I acknowledge the dangers involved, and I’m lucky because I know their identity and how they operate. Why would anyone work with me? Why would anyone trust me with their money? No customer wants to be number one and no customer wants to have lessons learnt based on them. Of course, in reality, we know that every project experiences issues, every team has them and despite what the marketing material says, when the rubber hits the road, expectations and deliverables rarely align. Success in my experience is down to the determined few that never let the mine cart fall off the track, and enjoyed by the people that sign the contract or manage the communications.
To protect against some of the early obstacles, Curvium was held in stealth until revenue hit a certain level and until the business plan hit some milestones. I mentioned on a podcast recently that Curvium is only currently me as a full time committed employee, but make no mistake, every reseller and system integrator has full time heads and a pool of contracted resources and in that regard, Curvium is no different to any other reseller. The key difference is the oversight that I provide and as we grow, that oversight capability will grow. The attention to detail and the relationships are what will make the difference in delivering the vision, especially in the time of AI, LLMs and a looming tech debt, accountability disaster and investment bubble disaster. If it bursts, the year 2000 will seem like a walk in the park. Anyway, I digress.
History
Anyone who knows me will know this isn’t my first rodeo. I had a naive attempt at this about 15 years ago. I was a good network engineer, built a partner portfolio up, and then between customers not paying their bills and not marketing that I was open for business, money dried up.
- Customers that didn’t pay was a reflection of size. The customers I did work for were large. They paid when it suited them and despite my payment terms, paid in excess of 120 days. It killed me outright. I secured a £1m invoice factoring deal, but problem number 2. was worse.
- Lack of marketing was the real problem. I had witnessed other small businesses growing and receiving phone calls, landing large deals, and seeming to grow out of thin air. That was pure lack of insight and absolute naivety. I had a website and the phone rarely rang.
For this part of the story, I also engaged in a deal that could have been good long term, but had a confidence issue, mainly driven by the lack of business experience. That drove me to shut down and seek safe harbour as an employee.
After I closed the last business down, I was left begging for jobs. I was unemployable and left with no alternative other than to seriously dumb down my history, hide the ambition, and managed to land a job as a network…you know, I’m not even sure how to describe it. A network person-ish. That job despite being soul destroying got me to the point of being able to pay bills and survive. You won’t find that job on LinkedIn, so don’t try guessing! Once back on the ladder, I managed to step up the rungs, but it wasn’t without its challenges. The job that shall remain a mystery, comprised of being a support person for a reseller of IT services. The business was a voice provider, knew the square root of nothing about networks, yet made money—and good money—selling them. It was eyebrow-raising and it was hard to swallow, given what I’d just tried to do and failed at. Quite possibly the biggest lesson I would ever learn; you can sell anything with the right sales team, you just have to be brave enough to suit up and boot up and get out there.
Future
Curvium has the skill, the right partner vendors and the right skill pool to succeed. It requires a tremendous amount of marketing and my job is to instil trust and confidence with customers to show them they can get what they require, cheaper than the competition, but without compromising quality. The sheer lack of tiers of salespeople, commission payments, and huge overheads see the price come down significantly, and working with the right kind of person out of the gates gets the customer immediately closer to the outcome they demand. My job is to turn those hesitations and negative answers, into positive interactions and yes, I firmly believe I can do this as well as deliver the technology and commercial vehicle to do so.
I’m still human
This blog will remain as a historic journal, but also house personal learnings as I take Curvium to its next revenue milestone and early set of employees. There are more than a few people involved with Curvium and I’m lucky to have a great support network and set of business partners and suppliers that have all played their part to get Curvium where it is today. When I say “we” in blog posts and podcasts, I’m not making stuff up either to make Curvium seem bigger than it is. We are a we and I talk about the silent partners, investors, suppliers and interested parties that have backed the vision and have helped deliver products and services globally this year. To those people I say thank you and look forward to bringing more people in to Curvium.
I’ve come a long way in the last few years and have also committed to small pet projects to keep my own learning journey alive. To deliver the best services and products, my own eyes must be wide open to steer the ship and call out obstacles. Knowing what those obstacles are, knowing how to navigate and steer the ship, are all key skills that require constant practise and polish. Small pet projects are a key part of the foundations for the path I’ve already walked, and they continue to provide great insights and foundations and provide Curvium the same language to use with customers to have empathy for their missions.
A talk about pet projects wouldn’t be complete without sharing the latest pet. Dumperoo.com went live last week, which is a small HTTP developer tool I created the year before to replace webhook.site. It’s great for working with webhooks, inspecting the HTTP calls from client code and working with async systems that use redirects and HTTP call-backs. It uses NATS.io for data persistence and was built with React (sorry Delaney, I still don’t know Data-star well enough). Dumperoo - because I have a childish flair, so went with it.
I look forward to sharing more in public as the Curvium mission continues to evolve and grow!
