Why I Started NetBooks #1: I Hate Administrivia
I started DaVero almost 20 years ago (1988) because I knew that we could make great olive oil here in
I didn’t do it because I love bookkeeping, or any other kind of record keeping for that matter.
Interestingly, it was at almost exactly the same time that I began work on the program that became QuickBooks.
How, you might ask, do these seemingly opposite things coexist? Simple: I love teaching computers to do the things I hate. Computers are patient, consistent, and great at following directions.
[Side note: when I was an undergrad at Stanford, they had a banner in Pine Hall, the computer center, above the counter where you went to pick up your printout. It read: “Remember, the computer is a high-speed idiot. In the event of an error, check the low-speed idiot first.”]
QuickBooks tamed the bookkeeping problem really well, and has continued to do so ever since. I think it’s still the best bookkeeping software in the world.
Over the years, though, DaVero has grown into one of the premier producers of olive oil in the world. It’s also become much more complicated: more products, more people, more stuff. All of which leads to more administrivia. Which I hate as much today as I did before. As does my wife (and co-owner) Colleen McGlynn, whose former career as a top chef has helped make DaVero what it is today.
With each new employee has come new complexity. (“You know, if it weren’t for these employees and these customers, this would be a pretty great business!” – Anonymous) More stuff, and more of it falling through the cracks.
And that, in a nutshell, was the inspiration for NetBooks. From my tech career, I knew that we could build something that would tie all the loose pieces together, and turn chaos into (something approaching) order.
There’s a saying in
Five years later, here we go.
