Life Pivots: A Time for Thanks
I co-founded BP3 over 17 years ago, you'll never guess what happened next...
Catching up with two friends in the industry: Rob Koplowitz and Francis Carden.
Before I get to the main story this week: I recently caught up with Rob and Francis on the Low Down on Low-Code podcast which you can find on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, or you can watch the video here:
You could do worse than listening to Rob and Francis when trying to understand the impact of technology on business. We didn’t start out as friends - but amazing that Rob’s and Francis’ friendship started right at our conference in Austin! (Driven!). Just in the first few minutes, we name dropped some incredible people. Harry Vonk, Krista White, David Newton, Scott Sagan, Krasner - and later on, Lance Gibbs, Phil Gilbert, and others.
One more shout-out - that artwork behind me is something beautifully crafted by Vin Salvo. You would be amazed at the talents your friends have!
Okay now on to the main show…
It is a Season of Change for our Family
A few months ago, my wife and I dropped off our daughter in Spain for 4 years of university. It was a proud but also emotional moment for us. We are so proud of her, the adult she has grown into, and the potential she has in front of her. It is time for her to find her way without mom and dad looking over her shoulder.
A few weeks ago, I graduated from CEO to board member at BP3, the company that I co-founded with Lance Gibbs 17 years ago. I wrote about it on LinkedIn at the time. It’s time for BP3 to find its way its original founders.
There are always a thousand things you wish you could include in a post like that, which you can’t. And a hundred more people to thank, but you need to stop somewhere to keep it legible.
A few minutes ago I read through some of the comments that I missed when I first posted it- really touching comments from clients and team members about how I or BP3 changed their lives and careers. We often don’t notice moments of kindness we offer to others because we’re just being ourselves - but those we are kind to will remember those moments the rest of their lives. I’ve been criticized before for caring too much about our clients and team members as individual people - but it is who I am. And in a very real sense, it is who BP3 is, and it shows through.
We often don’t notice moments of kindness we offer to others because we’re just being ourselves
I’m considering sharing more of my BP3 journey in future posts - what I’ve learned, how we accomplished what we did, what I see in the market, and maybe even a bit about our mistakes. To that end, I’d like to start with a little history before I move forward in order to set some context, and in order to say thank you. Starting with this post, we’ll be looking back at some of what we’ve achieved together. It’s not an insignificant list.
The Recognition you Never Expected to Receive
We didn’t start BP3 to win awards, but a funny thing started happening a few years into it: people started to notice that what we had going at BP3 was special. I gathered up some of the trophies at the office - and there are many more. Just a sample of the kind of recognition we received. When I step back, we received some really amazing commendations:
We were recognized as a Leader in 3 successive Forrester Waves in our space over the course of 6 years. In a future post I’ll share how we approached these waves and why we felt confident that we could show well.
Austin’s Fast 50. We appeared 7 times in this listing of the fastest growing companies in Austin, Texas. That might be a record - and we appeared as high as #8 on their list.
We were recognized as a Great Place to Work - #1 in Austin by the Austin American-Statesman, as high as #2 in the Austin Business Journal, and as high as #8 Nationally in the Fortune Magazine Great Places to Work feature for businesses under $100M in revenue. I’m most proud that we didn’t do anything unnatural to place well - we were just being ourselves.
Awards from our partners. BP3 won awards from IBM, Automation Anywhere, BluePrism, Broadcom, and Camunda. I’m particularly proud of the awards we won early in our history with IBM, and just recently with Camunda, winning their highest partner awards in the last two years.
bpmNEXT. This was a great conference every year that showcased the latest and greatest in business process management and beyond each year. We were runner up 2 or 3 times in this event, which was organized as a series of Ignite-style talks- 5 minutes, 20 slides, and then 15 minute demo and 10 minute Q&A.
Tech Titans award for Best CTO in 2015. While that was an award given to me, it was clearly just recognizing what a great team does - make their leader look good.
The Impact you Never Expected to Deliver
I also think back on what BP3 allowed us to do in the world. Not in terms of accolades, but in terms of impact. Well, what do I mean by that?
First, we hired countless college graduates to BP3, and recruited many of them to Austin. We also ran a great summer internship program. At the end of the summer one of my favorite parts was taking them to Allen’s boots to buy them all a pair of cowboy boots to take home. One of the intern’s favorite parts was designing their own intern t-shirts.
These interns went on to do great things at BP3 or elsewhere, and the folks we hired out of college had significant impact on BP3 and our trajectory as a company. College recruiting is a powerful way to build your company culture and brand, and to build long-lasting value.
Second, we had a chance to influence how the market thought of business process, BPMN, and how to solve process orchestration challenges with software. We became “BPM famous” - well known in our market niche. I trace this influence back to three key elements: my wife Cindy convincing me to join Twitter in 2008; Wanda Kay Rudden convincing me we needed marketing; and the arrival of Krista White and Amit Malhotra to help us elevate our messaging and branding above the noise.
Third, friendships in the market were formed. Over time we became friends with competitors, analysts, and partners in our space. I’ll always appreciate the friendships I made with Rod Favaron and Phil Gilbert, Jakob Freund and Daniel Meyer and Frederic Meier, Mihir Shukla, David Knapp, Neil Ward-Dutton, Matt Warta, Sandy Kemsley, Clay Richardson, Rob Koplowitz, and others.
Fourth, we had the chance to bring people to the United States or help them achieve their dream of getting a green card or their citizenship. I just had lunch with one of those long-time coworkers - 10 years at BP3! - so proud of what he has achieved since arriving in Austin, and proud of America that we welcome amazing people like him to become American citizens as well.
Finally, we brought companies into the BP3 fold who really wanted to be part of what we were building, and gave us a chance to help them achieve higher goals together. Our earliest acquisition was Modexe in London, followed by Teknovare in Denver, and Futurum, and then on to Extra Tech, DigiBlu, darwinLabs and bSpoqe. Each of these has made BP3 better and helped me form new life-long friendships.
One more point. Our clients achieved great impact for their businesses by working with BP3 - but this is the impact we expected to have. We started every project believing we would succeed, and more than 99% of the time, we succeeding in delivering the value our clients expected. It’s an amazing track record. Nothing made us prouder than working on projects that really mattered to our clients. And this is a core element of BP3 culture that is being carried forward into the future.
This is why we say, if your business matters, your process matters. And if your process matters, it isn’t real until you put it in software.
The Opportunities you Never Expected to Have
You can infer from above that one opportunity I never expected to have, but which BP3 provided, was the opportunity to lead an international firm, making friends with colleagues, customers, and partners all over the world. This is an opportunity that changes your world perspective, it changes who you are. You acquire an appreciation for your home, as well as for all the places you can visit, and what makes them unique and special. I literally wouldn’t be the person I am today without these experiences.
The adventures of BP3 also gave me the opportunity to support another startup: the Magellan International School in Austin, Texas. We joined in its second year, and I joined the board a year or two after that, and eventually served as Chair for 5 years. Thanks to BP3, I was able to support BP3 with tuition, donations, time on the board, and perspective. When we sold a portion of BP3 to investors, we used proceeds to help Magellan create the Francis-Lo I-Lab for Design+Making, as a way to help students connect ideas with tangible actions.
As I write this, my children are fluent and literate in Spanish (certified by the Spanish government), and they are also conversational in Mandarin. My daughter is now a freshman in college in Spain, an opportunity it is hard to imagine we would have found without BP3, and without Magellan, in our lives.
BP3 gave me the opportunity to show my children my values - through my work, and through my commitment to our team. And when I write that, it reminds me that BP3 also gave me the chance to prove that you could build a business you’d be proud to run or work for, and to let BP3 be an expression of my values and how we care for our team.
BP3 gave me the opportunity to see how a team looks after each other - whether it is helping someone recover from a house lost to forester fire, or helping our colleagues in Ukraine. I saw how we care for our clients, and go above and beyond to help them - and how we go above and beyond to help each other. These are lessons I learned by example from my team - every day.
Finally, BP3 gave me the chance to be a supporter of my wife’s entrepreneurial dreams as she build her first business (Red Velvet) from the ground up, built a world class headquarters for it, and then bought another business (Strong Events). She’s a rockstar and I am lucky to be the “trophy husband” in our relationship.
One more thing..
If you’re looking for interesting / clever gifts for yourself or a family member… it may be too late to order for this Christmas, but in that spirit, I have to recommend taking a look at Studio Neat. They just make a few products and they make them really well. I’ve been a fan of their Mark One pens, and panobook notebooks, for years.
Another favorite is a shop in Florida called MAKR. They make many fine products out of leather, but in particular, they make iPhone sleeves that I quite like. While they are expensive, they’ll generally last you several generations of phones before you misplace it. (it isn’t likely ever to wear out on you). I’m a fan, and I’ve been using these phone sleeves for years.