> One problem Mr Rodrigues says the company has faced, is struggling to recruit enough good computer programmers.<p>Well yeah, he's trying to run a software business in Mississauga. As a developer who used to commute to the 'Saug every day: very few of us want to work there. No decent food, no after work fun, just suburb hell for miles around.<p>He's competing with the banks and Amazon downtown in Toronto proper. He's also competing with Google Waterloo 30 minutes in the other direction for people not interested in living in the city. And he's going to be competing with them on pay as well as location.<p>Edit: woo, this may be my most controversial comment ever based on the point swings. I welcome counterpoints! Discussion is always good.
"I don't think they realised that they were talking to just one guy in a basement, so when the person asked to speak to someone in sales I came back on the phone with a slightly different tone."<p>This takes the "Fake it till you make it" mantra perfectly!
I met somebody the other day who works for a tiny start-up and said their MD frequently hires a couple of extra actors to make the office look busier when they have client meetings.
This is a very inspiring story and the quintessential manifestation of JFDI. It takes some serious guts to quit your job and say "i'm going to build a software product", with no ideas to start with. I hope Carl can keep growing Soti or even start something else once he gives the reigns to his managers.
Amazing story. Well done Carl. I don't think I would have had the strength of character to turn down an acquisition offer from Microsoft like he did.<p>Good to see a company with turnover in the $80M/yr range and still being 100% owned by him and his wife.
Just to balance the hagiography out, the company has mostly bad reviews on Glassdoor:<p><a href="https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/SOTI-Reviews-E156148.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.glassdoor.ca/Reviews/SOTI-Reviews-E156148.htm</a>
This company, while impressive, was not built in a basement. It merely started in a basement, which is way different.<p>That's like saying "Apple - A $700B firm built in a garage"<p>I'd like to know what the actual largest single-founder business is that's being run out of a basement
In Nepal, with 100k USD, one can rent decent office space, offer in-work benefits/recreations and employ 15+ professionals (including tech and non-tech), for 2 years. Yes, you can literally trade salary of 1 engineer with entire company fund.
tl;dr: <i>He [...] spent a number of years working as a consultant, before launching Soti in 2001. [B]ack in 2001 he [...] started to try to dream up something. [...] After a month of working[...], Mr Rodrigues had come up with [an] idea - a software system that allowed the user to control his or her mobile phone from their laptop. [M]ost people have never heard of the firm - because it sells its mobile technology software systems to companies instead of consumers</i>
Soti ONE platform, explained by Carl Rodrigues:<p><a href="https://youtu.be/MUXlTnFBOu8" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/MUXlTnFBOu8</a>
What is the use case for controlling your phone from your computer? To enforce company policy on company phones?<p>Or Tech support? Like the Amazon Fire phone?