About the Founder

I'm starting this blog to chronicle what it takes to start a small business. I'm hoping people can use this information to help avoid the mistakes and pitfalls I am sure to encounter and to help present good ideas that people can use in their own businesses.

First, I want to talk a little about me. My name is Bernie Hoffman. I graduated from Michigan Technological University with a degree in Business and I am currently an IT consultant specializing in the Microsoft technology stack. I have been consulting for 13 years and have considerable experience in developing software in the financial services industry.

When I first moved to Colorado from Michigan, I found a job doing sales for a computer hardware distribution company. While working for that company, I encountered many issues when trying to configure a computer system for customers. At the time, many of the parts were not interchangeable. Many errors were made that forced the sales people to go back to the customer and give them the bad news that the original configuration wouldn't work with the selected parts. This, of course, usually meant selecting a more expensive part as a replacement and also introduced a delay as we scrambled to replace the part in the system. Not a good position to be in!

I cut my teeth in technology by creating a web-based application that only allowed parts that worked together to be assembled into a quote the sales force could use to help streamline the sales process. At the time, very few web applications existed. The Internet as we know it today started with the web browser released in 1993 known as Mosaic...

After I had some skills developing web applications, I quickly found myself in a very good position from a career standpoint. It seemed that everyone needed a web developer and I quickly taught myself how to develop enterprise-level software. For 13 years I worked at companies both big and small. I worked in telecommunications, environmental engineering, and the financial services industries. At the end of the day, I have been exposed to some great companies, great people, and a whole slew of experiences that will hopefully give me the skills needed to start and run a successful small business.

That is all for now. Next time I will be talking about what it means to me to be an entrepreneur.