Around 2011 to 2012, business and investment scams were rampant in the Philippines.
Many of the businesses that closed or disappeared during that time blamed their IT providers. The story was often the same: the provider had made mistakes or had disappeared, and that was why funds were misplaced and money was lost.
The more I saw, the more I noticed it was both. Some IT providers really were failing their clients. Some businesses were using IT as a scapegoat. From the outside, it was hard to tell which was which.
I didn’t have the tools or the authority to investigate any of it. What I could do was start working as a freelance full-stack developer, and begin exploring and creating small business systems myself.
Along the way, I realized that many small and medium enterprises are legitimate, honest businesses that need real help automating their business processes. Yet most of them end up hiring private IT individuals, freelancers, or IT providers nobody knows. They deserve IT work they can rely on.
That’s why I started creating systems, and why, in 2013, I started my company, Customized Online Solutions.