5701 Lonetree Blvd.
Rocklin, CA 95765
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(916) 920-4730 |
EVOKNOW is a venture-cap free, self-funded, financially responsible and conservatively built company with a megaton of emphasis on creating people-first business and professional connections for life, or at the least, for a very long time.
We started our company with the same old dream that every software startup dreams about: building successful software that many people want to use. Our first attempt at database-driven customer profiling and marketing application was successful under a venture-funded environment. However, the VC side of our partnership created significant grief for some of the original partners (namely Lance and Kabir) so they moved on. This created a need for building a new company without any VC funding. EVOKNOW was created in 2001. EVOKNOW spent significant part of its own funding to build a data mining and email campaign system called ROI Mail that never saw the light of day because none of the partners felt that the end product reflected their original vision. We had chosen to develop a desktop based solution using Java and Microsoft SQL server back-end that simply did not deliver the performance and ease of use and administration that we initially planned to have. Our biggest mistake was to ignore our core expertise — Web application development.
It was time to move on to the next product idea. But funding prohibited the company from remaining under the radar and keep on trying new product ideas. Luckily, our books on open source technologies were already making our phones ring with prospective customers who needed our expertise for their own products. Even though we had not envisioned helping customers with their own products; we decided to create a division of the company that worked on customer products as long as there was some guidelines that we were able to enforce: no hourly consultant-like relationship, only true partnerships where EVOKNOW would be a true technology partner for our customers and we play as the technology adviser for the companies. Thankfully, we were able to forge a few relationships that created the baseline for our company today.
The company was in the black shortly after the customer-oriented service department was formed. It enabled EVOKNOW to create a smaller R&D department that focuses on tinkering with new ideas, product concepts and new technologies.
Developing Web software and online services that people want to use is our primary mission.
We want to work with a small number of customers who understand the power and importance of technology in their business and are willing to apply the technology best-practices to differentiate themselves from their competitors. What we do, and how we do things, are not suitable for everyone as we are strictly focused on custom solutions instead of generalized solution for mass market share.
Our management team has silicon valley, Wall Street and global economy-of-scale expertise.
Kabir is the founder and Chief Technologist of EVOKNOW. Kabir is also the writer in the company. He single handledly wrote a dozen books that served as the company’s primary marketing capital over the last decade. Kabir is passionate about “practical” software engineering practices suitable for the small and mid-size companies and organizations.
Kabir is a great believer and a long-time practitioner of peer programming. He has extended the core peer programming concept to many other aspects of his day-to-day work. For example, one of the many engineering teams in the company is dedicated to work with him directly on many technical and business matters. He strongly believes that his peer-work methodology significantly increases his own job-satisfaction. This seemingly unusual approach to getting work done allows him to focus on the big-picture aspects of a problem while other team members keep a very close eye on the nitty-gritty details in real-time. The resulting work-product is worth everyone’s time and effort.
“Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion and malperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”- Peter Drucker
When he is not sharing his screen with his team or writing blog entries or chapters for his future books, he enjoys spending time with his two-year old toddler, Ethan. Kabir has keen interest in learning digital photography — the shooting part and not the post-processing end and he’s also in the process of exploring golf which seems to be literally all around him in Rocklin, CA.
Lance is the President and the “Wall Street” guy in the company. His primary interest is to develop a mass-market Web application that goes big — enough to get noticed by a bigger player in the same space. Lance and Kabir have built multiple startups previously and have been working as a team for nearly a decade.
“The secret to success is constancy to purpose.”- Benjamin Disraeli
Mahbub served as the Vice President of operations from 2002-2010. Recently, he relocated to Canada for personal reasons. Even though he is no longer involved in our day-to-day operations, he remains as a member of our board of directors.