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<p>Dear midPoint community,</p>
<p>Early summer 2011, ten years ago. We started midPoint project. We
were preparing to set up a company to provide funding for midPoint
development. We got the name, but there is much more than just a
name needed to establish a company.<span id="more-7544"></span><br>
MidPoint project was <a
href="https://evolveum.com/ten-years-of-midpoint/">up and
running</a>, we got <a
href="https://docs.evolveum.com/midpoint/release/1.7/">first
release out</a> and we were already working on next one. We were
all convinced that open source is the right way to go. Open source
is, in theory, a perfect way to develop and distribute software.
However, there are few practical obstacles, such as the annoying
habits of the developers to eat and sleep. Someone has to pay the
bills.</p>
<p>Our plan was to set up a new company to provide funds for the
development. We have already <a
href="https://evolveum.com/where-did-evolveum-come-from/">decided
about the name</a>: Evolveum. That was all we had. We knew that
identity management software is needed. We knew that most of
existing commercial IDM products fail miserably. We even had the
code, albeit it was hardly better than a prototype. We knew there
is an opportunity. For a bunch of people living in a
post-communist part of Europe this was a once-in-a-lifetime
opportunity. However, we had no idea how to take advantage of that
opportunity. We had no business plan, we had no marketing, we had
no partners and there were only a very few potential customers
within our reach.</p>
<p>Therefore we started to tackle the most important problem first:
company logo. We did what all the reputable companies do, we used
our limited funds to hire a graphic designer. The idea was to keep
the “proper engineering” theme that <a
href="https://evolveum.com/where-did-evolveum-come-from/">got us
our name</a>. The designer was a weird character. He did not
even want to talk to us directly. All communication was mediated
by a friend. Yet, his work was good. After a couple of iterations
we were getting close to what we wanted.</p>
<img moz-do-not-send="true"
src="https://evolveum.com/wp-content/uploads/evolveum-logo-prototype-2011.png"
alt="Evolveum 2011 logo prototype" width="896" height="269">
<p>This was the “proper 20th century engineering” or “Leonardo da
Vinci” theme that I have envisioned. I loved the design. Keen
marketing eye can probably spot all the problems already. But
there was no keen marketing eye in our team at the time. Therefore
we went on with the theme to design a website. Our
brilliant-but-weird designer didn’t like the idea of getting his
hands dirty with web design. Therefore we had to find a different
chap. We were not that lucky this time. We went through several
design iterations, getting from bad to worse. We were getting
nowhere, and the time was running out. In the end I got angry,
pulled together some pieces from the design proposals and glued
them together with my amateur web design skills. It worked. We got
our first company website.</p>
<img moz-do-not-send="true"
src="https://evolveum.com/wp-content/uploads/home-c.png"
alt="Evolveum 2011 Website" width="1042" height="584">
<p>It looked swell! Just kidding. It was a disaster. But this was
the best we could do at the time. By the end of summer we have got
our web presence up and running, on our old server in the suburbs,
connected to the Internet by a slow and unreliable link. It was a
start.</p>
<p>Of course, the early days of Evolveum were not all about the
looks. We were also working on a business strategy, although the
word “strategy” is perhaps a huge exaggeration here. All of us
fellow conspirators were running businesses for some time already.
We had <i>some</i> business experience. However, those were
local, east-europe-style freelance-like businesses. We had only a
very rough idea what it means to run a global business. But more
on that later.</p>
<p>(Reposted from <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://evolveum.com/preparing-evolveums-look/">Evolveum
blog</a>) </p>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Radovan Semancik
Software Architect
evolveum.com</pre>
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