Our Startup Story

Similar to many others, I've always been fond of the idea of more flexible time to be a better dad, and having more financial capacity to be able to better contribute to the needs of wider society and make a positive difference in the world.

As a small attempt at service to wider society I was working with some friends to provide them with employment and the freelance project I’d assigned to them was coming to an end. I was basically running out of ideas and work for them to do but wanted them to still have work experience opportunities and a source of income.

The idea simply occurred to me that forms systems are notoriously complex and never-ending, and that if I’d ask them to work on a forms system I’d never have the problem of running out of things for people to do!

Around the same time my expectant wife and I were at the hospital for a routine pregnancy checkup for our second son when our doctor gave us the bad news that the pregnancy was at high risk of very premature birth and that my wife must not leave the hospital. She was to stay in hospital on strict bed-rest with minimal movement for three months.

It was in this really un-ideal situation that I was somehow motivated to push through and work on a new product, till the early hours of the morning, even bringing my notepad of ideas with me to the hospital to scribble screen designs and ideas on whenever the opportunity allowed. Having a notepad or piece of paper available became a necessary travel item and I’d always have one nearby to write down notes whenever ideas would come to me.

This carried on for a very long time, our son was thankfully born into the world at a healthy 37 weeks, and despite the regular exhaustion and lack of free time, I kept chipping away at the goal in the early hours of the morning, very late in the evenings, the bus commute to work in the morning, and the bus commute back home.

"I would always hope to get a spot in the left or right corner of the back seat of the bus so there would be enough space to use the laptop without constantly bumping my elbow into the person on my right whenever I needed to use my mouse."

Having been working for large companies most of my life and having 20 years hands-on experience in software engineering and secure online systems I felt confident that with a team I could help make something world-class, and the quest to produce a Universal, Secure, Enterprise-grade data collection solution began.

Finally I must add that thankfully I also had my dear wife's support all the way through, otherwise this could never have transitioned from a series of ideas and paper notes, into reality.

Where did the name Global Patron come from?

The domain name was registered back in 2002. The name is associated with having a global vision, and being of service.

It took many years to create this platform. What motivated you to keep going for so long?

A big motivator and source of energy for me to keep persisting even when very fatigued was being regularly aware of the difficult circumstances that many others live under. It was especially close to home for me because I also personally knew some relatives and friends who were (and still are) under severe economic pressure and injustice in their home countries purely due to prejudice.

In an increasingly interconnected world, more light is being cast on the social conditions of every people, giving greater visibility to their circumstances. While there are developments that give hope, there is much that should weigh heavy on the conscience of the human race, and we must redouble our efforts to use our skills, whatever they may be, to make tangible improvements in the well being of our societies.

In the words of Bahá’u’lláh:

Do not busy yourselves in your own concerns; let your thoughts be fixed upon that which will rehabilitate the fortunes of mankind

Here's a photo of my remote "office". The good old 617x commute. The prized seat for getting work done on my laptop was the far left or right space on the back-seat.

A Final Note...

Our platform provides clients with an enterprise-grade ‘universal’ data capture solution that is powerful enough to build anything they please as far as data capture is concerned.

Play around with our enterprise-grade forms platform. Be it a sophisticated or simple form, you can effortlessly create the complete range of data collection forms, all from a single platform with minimal or no coding knowledge required.

You don’t have to take our word for it. You can see it for yourselves: www.globalpatron.com/