About
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We're great at what we do, and we know it. We live and breathe technology. Tech for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and even for all-important dessert. Tech when we wake-up, when we're sleeping, when we're watching the Science channel (sorry, we cannot pronounce or watch SyFy). Tech. Get it?
We're not happy unless we're under the hood, tinkering around with a product until it does more than it was supposed to. (You should see what we drive!) Similarly, we're not into solution providers that don't let us interface with their development in some way. So you can trust that when you work with Jolokia, you get the most advanced solutions with the best functionality. And that's not bragging... it's just true. (Ok, it is bragging. But it's still true.)
Why Jolokia?
You're probably wondering why we chose the name "Jolokia"? We like spicy food, and just like our passion for tech, we take it to the extreme. The Jolokia ("Chili Pepper" in Assamese Indian, you know... Indians from North East India kind of Indian) is the hottest pepper in the world. This isn't your grandmother's Tabasco kind of spicy. This is the knock your ass out the door and down the street kind of spicy. It is 4x hotter than the wimpy Habanero, or over one million scovilles for you heat connoisseurs. If you think your kung-fu is strong, please do come to our BBQ and claim boisterously that you can handle the heat...
The big-wigs.
The only thing that could really make these guys big-wigs is their hair styles, and even those aren't so big these days. But here's who you can blame for all this:
Mark Pace -- CTO, Co-Founder
Pace is the big man when it comes to tech. And he’s got some big ideas, big convictions, big… abilities… to share with us today. He designed all of Jolokia's systems based on a few key concepts he’s been passionate about for over a decade (which does make him super old, if you were wondering).
Systems need to be versatile. They need to scale easily. They need to be open enough to allow the people deploying them to get under the hood and make things work right.
From that philosophy direct to Jolokia's network—Pace made sure that from the onset Jolokia has been quick to adapt to meet the needs of a wide range of customers. The network can deploy systems with the speed of the cloud and also lock things up when security concerns require compartmentalization.
Though pretty much perfect in every other way, Pace is occasionally unable to grasp nebulous concepts, like revenue generation with no income source. During the Internet Boom 1.0, this led him toward one of the few sectors that was actually generating hard profits—the online dating sector. He co-founded one of the first social networking sites on the Internet before you were hearing the term “social networking” in the grocery store checkout line. At the time, the online dating sector was driving innovation on the Internet, with video streaming, user picture databases, live chat rooms, and algorithm-based friend matching (all those things you thought fancy-pants web 2.0 sites developed. Pbthth!). Thanks to Pace's god-like management skills and cutting technical designs, the flagship social site grew to just under 2 million users before being sold in 2006. Score.
A beautiful 6 lb, 3 oz baby SPAM filter is born.
Among other things, the online dating industry was a major source of SPAM. At one point the anti-spam nazi—err a late-90s RBL—blacklisted a major credit card processor, causing thousands of websites to lose processing for a few days. The issue spawned a hurried meeting, where one of the RBL heads suggested that someone should invent a better way than blacklisting entire sites for doing business with one spammer. Thanks to those mostly cynical words (and dare we say dare), Pace invented and patented a distributed content identification system that is in use in many popular anti-spam systems these days. Score.
We go way back.
Still reading? Want more? How about High School? Pace spent his high school and college years as an 80s hacker/phone phreak. He produced light and laser shows for early-90s raves in Southern California. And when all the nonsense he'd been telling people for years about a global computer network started coming true, he honed his attitude and snappy customer service skills as the Vice President of a San Francisco Bay Area Systems Integration shop. There he focused on telling customers why, really why, the Internet would be something they should learn to use. He also wrote about all these fun things for various trade rags (like InfoWorld) back when people read trade rags.
Yes, ladies and gents. That is what we’re getting at. We’ve arrived at the gist. Pace is amazing, AND he invented the, or maybe just talked about, the Internet a really long time ago.
Jay Kopita -- Vice President, Sales
If ever there was a Ringo Starr meets Vince Offer in the world of hosting... well, Jay would fit that bill. Not because he's the least talented here or was arrested for getting his tongue chewed on and in turn losing a certain "sham wowwy" gig (although he is musically talented and has had his share of TV appearances), but because he lucked out by joining us late in the game, is a charming guy, and understands how to tap into the psyche of the potential customer all the while sporting a flashy grin and an amusing story. It also helps that he actually ENJOYS doing sales (huh?) and seems to know many people that the other, less social people on this page, don't, making him a well rounded addition to the team.
"Closing a deal... any deal... is better than some amorous nights I've had. Wait, did I just say that?"
An ex-Hollywood actor, Jay decided to channel his go-getter attitude and communication skills into something a bit more steady in his quest to pay his bills, while building actual discernible business skills. Figuring his degree in Theatre Arts and Speech Communications needed to be put to better use, Jay jumped head first into the world of Entertainment Public Relations and got a boot camp training in what it means to hustle and network. And hustle and network he did. A few years and several dozen press releases, studio tours and thousands of phone calls later it was time to...
Take a walk on the wild side.
After honing his skills of persuasion, Jay decided to kick it up a few notches and channel additional skills like showing people how parting with their money and putting their business plans into better and more productive directions are good things and would well serve the customer, himself and the companies and clients he worked for. Moving into the online space as one of the first PR guys, once again, Jay started from scratch and carved out his own niche as an all around journeyman having learned a little about a lot all along the way and purposely choosing to do what many in this burgeoning arena neglected to do or simply ignored.
In addition to organizing annual trade shows and selling and marketing for a wide array of clients including but not limited to attorneys, resource sites, affiliate programs, movie makers and models, Jolokia marks the second employer / employee relationship between Pace and Jay, with the previous history involving PR and media relations with the social network that Pace sold in 2006. (He must have done something right those days...)
The bottom line is, Jay is the go to guy, the gatekeeper, the grunt. If he can't sell you on something... maybe it can't be sold?
John Mitchell -- Vice President, Development
There are a few things you should know about Mitch. First, never call him John, if you do you’ll get a whole load of Scottish gibberish words thrown at you and you can't be sure if he’s talking to you or just frothing at the mouth. The second is that you’ll never catch him in a suit; he has a firm belief that you cannot measure competence by the way someone dresses, but what you do need to know is that he is passionate about everything he does. Seriously, tho, he told us to say that. Really, if you ask him to "dress" up, he wears a skirt, so we try not to confuse the boy.
Yes, he wears skirts, but damn can he code!
Mitch’s passion is everything code related, he loves to code but doesn’t classify himself as a programmer due to universities churning out so many Zombie Programmers who know nothing of programming. Mitch is "One with the Tao of Code", or he "Codes with One Toe", we can't tell what he's saying through that accent. He regularly retreats to his basement for days at a time with masses of Red Vines, Red Bull and bacon (mmm bacon!) to works on creating secure, efficient applications for Jolokia.
Mitch is the baby of the team (if you compare him to the "eld yins" above) and has been coding since the age of 7, starting on a old Spectrum Sinclair in Basic. In secondary school (what we stupid American's call "high school") Mitch realized what fun could be had with the more “abused” side of computers; It's always fun to re-write graphic card drivers to listen for a special network call to flip entire desktops upside down… especially when its broadcast to an entire IT department in a high school and every machine flips its screen upside down at the same time! Pace met Mitch while Mitch was doing something that was, fortunately for Mitch, sealed permanently in Mitch's Juvenile Record. That something also got Mitch his first full time job working for Pace.
My goodness, someone else who graduated from Uni on the team!
After leaving school and being educated in the University of Paisley for Computing Science, Mitch got some “respectable” jobs coding in various industries. Mitch has held a variety of roles from a educational software developer for local community, to being a security administrator for a large multinational firm.
Service Policies
Now that you are bored to tears and scared of us (If you're not, you will be... You will be...), get more bored and more scared by reading the legalese; here's our Privacy Policy, our Security Policy and our Terms and Conditions.
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