One of the things I get asked a lot is how did Bulletproof Solutions get started?  My next few posts will address these questions and hopefully give you insight as to what makes this machine we call Bulletproof tick.

First off we need to look at where we came from.  In the spring of 1999 two long time friends, Tim Hawkins and Ian Donald approached me about the possibility of starting up an IT company.  Admittedly they knew nothing about IT but were more than willing to learn.  At the time I was working for a local IT company and was having a fair amount of success on the sales front despite knowing very little about sales and more about technology.  In a nutshell I was happy doing what I was doing and didn't feel the timing was right.  How things can change!

Just one year after that in the spring of 2000 in the midst of a .COM bust the company I was working for was sold and things began to change significantly for me and the thoughts of doing  this ourselves resurfaced and in May of 2001we started Bulletproof Solutions Inc.

Like most start-ups we have our stories to tell.  The one I tell most frequent is that of me working from my home office while my wife looked after four children from the local neighbourhood, four children all under the age of two I might add.   Ever tried to make a phone call to a customer you've never met with four kids screaming in the background?  Let's just say it doesn't work that well.  So I had to make a plan!  One thing about children that young is that they only keep it up for so long and then they have to have a nap.  Nap time was sales call time !  I had approximately 2 hours every day to make all my calls on the phone.  Mornings were reserved for out of the office meetings and proposals and THAT was the plan.

The name Bulletproof actually came naturally to the group after sitting down with the initial team and deciding on the focus of the company: Security and Network.   At the time, pre 911, the security market had not yet reached its full potential but the technical partners of the group, Jeff Shaw and Andrew Jefferies, felt this would the next big push within the IT industry.  To this day, everything we  do has a security and network component.

In my next post I'll share with you how we decided on the Security and Network focus and where that has led us too today.