Founder's Message 2.0

Twenty-four years ago, in the summer of 2002, I published a position statement on eSigma.com that still reads as if it were written yesterday.

I wrote that large enterprises had spent the prior two decades absorbing the total cost of new technologies, that EDI and UN/EDIFACT had given us global transactional collaboration, but that true collaborative commerce — the extension of governed business processes beyond the firewall — required something radically different.

I declared that the answer was open, standards-based, system- and data-agnostic interfaces, and that we had to push past the integration barrier and deliver transparent technology that distributed the total cost of ownership and enabled operational excellence at internet scale.

The mission then was to provide a secure, standards-based platform for the global discovery, consumption, and management of service-oriented business processes.

I promised to open-source the core, prove the concept organically with real users, and only then raise capital and scale — once the market and the technology were truly ready.

My advisors told me I was ten-plus years too early. I said five.

They were right. I was way wrong.

My late grandfather once told me, “If you cut hair or sell gas, you’ll be fine. Everything else is a gamble.”

In 2002 there was no AWS, no Snowflake, no usable AI. Web Services were XML nightmares, and Six Sigma still lived in Minitab and three-inch binders.

So I mothballed the dream, pivoted when I had to, and waited.

Today, the waiting is over.

The infrastructure I sketched on napkins in 1999 now costs pennies and powers 94% of the Fortune 1000. The open, agnostic interfaces I demanded in 2002 are now the default architecture of the $723 billion cloud ecosystem. The “service-oriented business processes” I promised are today’s APIs, microservices, and AI agents.

And yet companies of all sizes are still drowning — spending billions on process mining, dashboards, and consultants — yet finishing fewer real improvement projects than ever.

In 2026, I am bringing eSigma home.

Not as an early-2000s Web Services directory — but as a razor-sharp, cloud-native, AI-first DMAIC 4.0 tool.

An AI-enabled system designed to reduce defects, automate continuous improvement, and accelerate operational excellence.

I am no longer early. I am right on time — and in many ways still the first.

To everyone who got the message in 2002, who watched me mothball the dream in 2014, who waited while the world spent trillions building the infrastructure I needed:

Thank you for your patience!

2026 is the year I make good.

I’m doing it.