Maxus was a start-up company working on a software product. It was a plugin for Drupal and WordPress to aid the website owner in copywriting. We presented Contentian in Echelon 2010, a conference for start-ups in the region. I gained a lot of technical and entrepreneurial experience during this process. However, to generate revenue we had to transition the company to focus on developing web services for clients. We consulted and worked on several projects and a sample are described below.

One client that sells widgets wanted their work-flow automated. After several meetings with the client and asking important questions raising issues they didn't foresee, we designed the technical specs. We improved the security of selling their widgets online by better integrating Paypal payments. We implemented an inventory system for multiple warehouses and a system to communicate with the shipment company. We processed daily reports from the shipment companies as well as created daily reports that could be used by marketing and accounting. We also integrated with FedEx to allow creating custom branded emails sent to the customers.

Another start-up wanted to create a website to allow members to get discount prices at high-end restaurants. We designed the architecture to allow the administrators to easily add restaurants, add discount offers and alter levels of permissions for administrators of different cities. Restaurants could limit how many tables were offered at different times during the day. Members could filter the list of special offers by date, time, cuisine, price or neighborhood. After selecting a restaurant and viewing the details and reviews, they could purchase credits through Paypal and book reservations. Confirmation was sent to both the restaurants and members.

I worked on projects for Intrum Justitia, Europe’s leading Credit Management Services company. We coded the backend that implements all the business rules for who gets bill reminders and when they’re sent to the debtors. As they changed business rules or added features (allowing people to pay in installments), I was the maintainer of the module. I also lead several sub-projects to import, export and automatically process data for SIMIM, which is the company that collects money for music royalties in Belgium. Procit sent me to the Netherlands for two months to get closer to the client and integrate with our European colleagues.

As a structural engineering company, we had to design engineering plans for buildings designed by some of the biggest home builders in the country: KB Home (Austin branch), Pulte Homes and Ryland Homes (San Antonio branches). As requests came in from our clients, I would delegate the tasks to the proper staff in the office. We also had to send field crew to the sites for measurements and inspections and I would schedule the crews and keep tabs on where they were. As office manager I had to ensure that the operation was running smoothly and handle any urgent or special requests by our clients and make sure they were happy.

This position was effectively an assistant manager since the restaurant didn't have one. Depending upon the staff that day, we had to assign roles and pick up the slack regardless of where it was. Sometimes we cut vegetables or cook food, sometimes we took orders, served food or ran the register, other times we washed dishes, cleaned the tables and toilets. Often doing all of them plus managerial duties during the same day.

An important role is to know the team members well so you can balance assigning tasks people like but also varying it up so no one is stuck doing a task no one likes. The main job was to manage the restaurant so we served good food so customers came back without them realizing or caring that we were a dysfunctional family of low paid foreigners, young students and drop-outs.