Journal: News & Comment

Small world of software

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Four and a half years ago Bill Dobie, whom I've known since the early 1990s when we were both in student politics at UBC, founded Navarik, the software company I now work for.

This week, he's featured as one of 40 people under age 40 who are "the future of business in British Columbia," according to Business in Vancouver magazine, which publishes the list each year. The articles themselves aren't available online if you don't subscribe to BiV, which is a shame.

Also on this year's list is John Caputo, who runs Maximizer, the last company where I had a permanent job before that ended in the dot-com bust of early 2001. Remarkably, he's helped the company prosper through the touch tech times. In 2002, a former student-politics colleague of Bill's and mine, Janice Boyle, also made the 40 Under 40 list for work in a very different field: fundraising for the charity Covenant House.

In 2004, Bill is one of only three out of the 40 young businesspeople without a car. (My family has two.) As part of his interview, Bill also said that he would eventually like to start another business, have a family, and go on vacation for two years. Miraz in New Zealand, quoting Kathy Sierra, has some words for him on that:

...we now know that it's virtually never too late to reinvent yourself. To start something totally new. To learn, even master, something completely different from what you've been doing for the past five, ten, forty years [...] people—regardless of age—can still achieve superior, even expert-level performance in things they haven't done before.

So there's some time yet. Besides, there's still the company to run now. Nice job on making the list, Bill. (Good thing Hina and I put in the nomination, I guess.)

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