The Road to 25 in '25

January 8th marked the start of our 25th year in business, as commemorated by our special 2025 logo you will see throughout the year.  I paused to reflect on the past 25+ years and how a calling to serve when I was a snot-nosed kid at Punahou led to the brilliant team and clients we are proud of today—and what lies ahead.

Recently my daughter Ashley interviewed me for a school project about how I decided to start an IT company.  After all, I majored in Japanese, became a flight instructor to build my hours to become an airline pilot, and pursued esoteric hobbies since I was a kid.  The answer is I really didn't.  It just sort of happened, and feeling a sense of calling, just kept doing the next thing that came about.

I was 13 when I got my first paid gig—$10 per hour to make house calls and fix computers.  My auntie spread the word, lined up my clients and appointments, drove me around, and soon raised my rate to $15.  I was paying GET and had a business license but couldn't open a business checking account as a minor.  My Mom, an accountant at a property management company, pulled strings at CPB to help with this important piece, and CyberTech Systems was born.

I spent my days at Punahou, and from 3pm til sometimes midnight, I was being driven around town to visit clients, which included an Internet cafe at Pucks Alley, a DoubleTree hotel in Waikiki, a security consulting company, and our longest standing client to this day—a multi-office oral surgery practice where my Auntie worked.  I trained my cousin (who was also my driver), paid for his pager (and later, his work cell phone), and started charging by the man-hour as Joe and I ran cables and cut over important line-of-business applications, to then go home and do mounds of homework and get some sleep.  On only one occasion, we worked from 2am-6am and I went straight to school to take a high school math exam.  I can't recall my grade, but somehow, I never ran out of gas—the perks of being young.

Somehow, I never felt out of place or intimated by the 50-something executives I dealt with.  It never once occurred to me that there was anything unusual about a national company subcontracting and trusting a teenager to handle such important projects.  I just did kind of what I do now: I show up and try to see how I can be of service and if my expertise can help solve business problems.  If there's money to be made, it will naturally follow.  I attribute much of this to my upbringing.  My Dad owned a mechanical engineering company, and my Mom taught me how to do the books.  Every month, her voice is in my head:  "Always reconcile your checking account as soon as the month ends.  It's the only way to maintain any checks and balances on your finances."  As an only child, I hung around my parents' friends more than kids my age.  I was intrigued by Uncle Tex's stories working at Continental Airlines in the parts department.  My Mom's late brother Uncle Thom taught me how to use my first CRM and regaled me with lessons from his pool and irrigation business in Texas.  This was my jam.  My family always said I was 13 going on 40, and I thought "precocious" was a word of admiration and flattery—perhaps my naiveté helped on this point.

After my years studying abroad in Japan came to an end and I got that degree at UH Manoa, I set out to make this into a real thing.  Prior to that, shortly after graduating Punahou, I got a call that would shape the future of my life and career.  Tommy Silva of T&T Tinting Specialists called my home phone, waking me up at 10am, with a pitch for a super-secret website project he asked if I knew how to build.  I returned his call at a more reasonable hour, and in time we penned an agreement, but Tommy's attorney at the time, Terry Lee, now with Lee & Martin, insisted I incorporate so the agreement could be between corporate entities.  Indevtech Incorporated was born and Tommy and Terry are still long-time clients to this day.

Indevtech reinvented itself many times over these 24+ years, pivoting from a web development company to a break-fix IT provider, then to a Managed Service Provider in late 2011 when I was about to have twins and needed to create an ongoing value building cycle with our clients to provide predicable service levels at a stable monthly fee.  Then again in 2007, we pivoted, this time to the cloud, and we started reselling SystemMetrics voice and data services until SystemMetrics was acquired by Hawaiian Telcom, and eventually decided it was best to stay vendor-neutral and simply refer clients to the vendor that made the most sense for them, without making any finders' fee in the process.  Many vendors have offered such "partnerships," but we refuse, in order to stay neutral and help our clients make their own best decisions.

In 2009, I picked up a small law firm and really enjoyed the people—the lawyers were reasonable and friendly, the staff seasoned and knowledgeable, a great COO who was quick to take my recommendations that would better the firm's productivity, and everyone just wanted a system that would work.  I realized that people don't really want 24/7 uptime at 99%—they want 100% uptime and support during the critical moments before a court filing deadline or when prepping for an offsite depo that starts in an hour.  One thing led to another, and in short order we found ourselves specializing in downtown law firms, learning the intricacies of how law firm personnel do their work, what matters to them, and how we could make their lives better through proper application of technology.  I obtained my Master of Legal Studies at Pepperdine Caruso School of Law, and the same year I graduated, enrolled at University of Hawaii at Manoa - William S. Richardson School of Law, hoping to eventually start an adjunct law practice supporting the legal aspects of technology in a modern high-risk business environment.

The lesson we learned from becoming downtown Honolulu's law firm IT specialists was that if we're going to go after a vertical market, we need to really understand how these people do business: how do they make their money?  Who are their clients?  What's special about their workflows, unlike other industries?  What really matters to them?  Only after working amongst these folks for a while can we hold ourselves out as experts and truly understand how to make recommendations in the firms' best interests.  Now in 2025, we are engaged in this core strategy of hyper-focus with a couple other vertical markets, striving to be the go-to IT firm for these niche industries.

I learned an important lesson sometime back in the early 2000s that shaped the way I do business today.  Hank Gellert, my Dad's late business partner, was at wits end because between Hawaiian Telcom, the alarm company, and the VoIP provider, somebody did something and the alarm could no longer dial out, which was a big problem because the Kalihi shop was often vandalized at night.  Each vendor crossed their arms and said, "not my problem."  Hank called and said, "Can I buy an hour of your time to come take a look at this?"  I strapped on my toolbelt, traced the wires, found the issue, and solved a business problem.  Hank didn't care whose fault it was nor had time to haggle with the vendors; he wanted to pay a professional to get it fixed.  I later learned that most sophisticated businesspeople are the same way—people and companies will pay for value.  So, I put my focus into building value and not competing on price, which led to one of our most treasured Core Values: How Can I Help?  This is the first question our help desk is trained to ask of anyone calling in—not whether their issue is within scope or if they are using a supported device, but what is the business problem you're trying to solve, and how can I be of service to you?

To answer Ashley's question, I didn't choose to be the head of an IT company; it chose me.  Each day I try to show up and see how I can be of service—to our clients, to our team, to my family, and to the other important people in my life.  Hackneyed as it sounds nowadays, I believe we are all given certain talents, and we are happiest to the extent we use them in service to others.  In my work as a mentor to other small business owners and a teacher to our staff, I try to help people uncover their gifts and talents and apply them for maximum service.

I hope you will all join us at our 25th anniversary party in 2026!