How did iXsystems get its start? I get asked this question a lot. Sure, you could look it up on Wikipedia or Google, but why get the secondhand version when you could get it straight from the source? That’s me, by the way.
I was working at BSDi in 2001 when they sold off part of the company to Wind River Systems and changed the BSDi name to iXsystems. If you hadn’t been transferred to Wind River Systems during the acquisition, you were worried for your job. There were massive layoffs. These were horrible—they’d use an intercom system to call you in and then you were just gone. I was the last remaining sysadmin and also the IT Director; they had fired everyone else and I had no one left to help out. As a result, I got really good at BSD servers/administration because I had to learn anything that I didn’t already know while under the gun. I had started OffMyServer as a side business for some extra money. OffMyServer offered SaaS solutions and helped manage services using custom software. I wanted to eventually build my own appliance to sell. We catered to exclusive clients—in fact, some of those clients continue to be our customers to this very day. Our motto was “We’re up at 2AM, so you’re not”.
Around late 2002, I heard that the Board of Directors was considering selling everything and closing shop. I had a dream of running my own company and a passion for our customers, so I put together a proposal, presented it to the board, and asked to buy the remaining assets. Knowing what I was paid, they laughed. After they realized I was serious, the board arranged for an employee buyout. We transferred everything to OffMyServer because that was the only business entity I had established that could take over everything on paper, very fast. The acquisition happened very quickly. When BSDi finally closed its doors, I was one of only two remaining employees left.
I partnered with Mike Lauth (the VP of Sales at BSDi) and a couple of other people. They showed up on the first day we opened—we were ready to work from day one. We grew slowly as a bootstrapped company. During the first year, no one took a salary. Everything we made went back into the company because we were not interested in VC funding. I remember putting all of our credit cards on a table and checking to see how much money we had to buy parts so we could fulfill orders. We were ecstatic when we made our first sale. We still have a copy of that first check. Of course, everything from that sale went right back into the company so we could keep operating. We grew and I went from no salary to getting paid $400/month. When I finally was making $1000/month, working 12 hour days, 7 days a week, it seemed like a dream come true.
Eventually, we made enough revenue to hire other people. In 2005, we changed our name back to iXsystems. About this time, we had nine employees and the company was thriving and growing.
Our real passion is Open Source software so iXsystems built servers for Open Source software. In the following years, we acquired PC-BSD (2006), the FreeBSD Mall (2007), and the FreeNAS project (2009). We used FreeNAS at the time and really didn’t want to see it move to a Linux base. When we offered to take over FreeNAS, it was our great record with Open Source that made Olivier Cochard-Labbé, the creator of FreeNAS, comfortable with passing the torch.
We’ve steadily grown since then. Now it’s fourteen years later and a much different place. We have over seventy employees, several storage appliances, a state of the art production facility in Silicon Valley, tens of millions in sales each year, and one of the lowest employee turnover rates in the industry. Not many businesses can say the same. After years of hard work and sacrifice, I can proudly stand tall and say, “We made it and as Trent Reznor said, nothing can stop me now.”
Matt Olander
iXsystems CSO and Co-Founder
