It was 1997, and the Internet was coming. In fact it was already here, in the UK, but few people or companies seemed to realise what a difference it was about to make. I had spent the first six years of my career since leaving school working with computers in various ways, learning to program and developing technology for managing data and business processes. The company I now worked with was a start-up in print management. The founder had previously led a larger company where I had worked as a programmer, and when he left to form a new business he invited me to join his team. It was a perfect environment for me to learn fast, and after three years we had a powerful technology platform up and running and the business was thriving. I was ready for my next challenge.
I had heard about Internet programming technologies and was amazed at the idea that it would be possible to develop software systems that could be accessed by anyone, anywhere in the world. Until then, any system I developed had been built to run on a physical network, often a network I had personally installed across one or more locations. But the Internet was an existing, vast international network on which people could connect to any system that was made available to them. The possibilities seemed endless and I was convinced that the easy availability of internet programming tools that I, and thousands of others, now had in our hands was about to change everybody’s lives.
So I envisaged a company where I could use this new Internet technology to help people do things better. To build software for organisations that could be accessed by anybody they chose. To develop websites that responded to individuals’ behaviours and needs. The Americans were doing this already; I estimated in 1997 that the UK was around two years behind the USA in terms of adoption of Internet technologies. Just two years earlier, Amazon had started to change the way people bought books in America, but it had not yet launched a UK operation. The technology, however, was all here. We in the UK could learn from two years of American experience online and catch up fast, I thought, if we moved fast.
I explained the opportunity to the founder of the company I was working for; Andrew was an entrepreneur and ambitious about new opportunities. He was supportive and suggested we partner in a new business, but I soon sensed that I would not be able to move fast enough in partnership with Andrew and so I talked with my wife, Jo, about the idea of setting up our own business.
It may have sounded like a crazy idea, to give up a stable job and start a business with no investment behind us. The year before, Jo had started her own self-employed business providing secretarial services, and had felt secure to take the risk knowing our income was relatively safe with my job. But for me to leap into the insecurity of a business with no cash in it would be the beginning of a journey of faith that we have never turned from.
I believed God was in this, and together we decided to ask him for confirmation. This would be the first or many ‘fleeces’ we would lay out before the Lord, just as the old testament hero Gideon had asked God for a sign to confirm his word before taking on a terrifying mission. There were two key elements to our step of faith. Firstly, we decided that if Jo and I were in business together then Jesus had to be in business with us too – it had to be his business. Secondly, we asked for confirmation that we were safe to proceed in the form of a contract for work that would guarantee revenue for several months, and would wait for me to give notice to leave the company I worked for. It seemed like a big ask but when I was offered a contract working on international financial systems for a company in London, that would guarantee more than enough income for the first year and would wait for me to leave my current job, we took this as the sign it was time to get started. We took out a bank loan for £3,500 to buy my first laptop, and we incorporated the company in April 1998.
I have heard it said that the first year in business is the most difficult. Ours was not. In fact, that first year was a season of few challenges. We were young, had a small mortgage, no children yet and we worked hard. And we were in business with Jesus! What could possibly go wrong?
I sometimes say that we set the company up with Jesus at the head, and have been learning ever since what he really wants to do with it. From the start, prayer has been an important part of our work, since prayer is talking with God and in a sense we have tried to make prayer as natural as talking with any other co-founder in the business. As our team grew, we would make a point of including Jesus in our weekly team meetings, and talking with him through prayer about the key issues being covered. If we were facing a challenge, we prayed about it; if we needed more sales, we prayed about that. We prayed with the team, whatever they believed and we included prayer as a natural part of many of our meetings, although we did not insist on anybody taking part. And invariably we would see amazing doors open up, or challenges overcome, after praying together. After a series of breakthroughs following prayer, one team member at the time remarked, “I don’t know much about Jesus but what I do know is that when Daniel prays, things happen!”
So prayer in the business is a natural conversation with our co-founder, but it is even better than that because today, after more than twenty years in business with Jesus, any member of our team can go straight to that co-founder, at any time, ask for help or talk about any aspect of their life. He is a better founder than I will ever be and he loves to spend time with the team. He cares about our clients too, and he’s with us at every client meeting, even though of course most clients do not know this since we do not add him to our guest list or calendar invitations.
This is the case for followers of Jesus everywhere – he is with them and, as he promised, wherever two or more are gathered in his name, he is there too. The sad thing is that often, his followers forget this or ignore the fact he is with them and is genuinely interested in the outcome of their work or meeting. What a missed opportunity!
This is one reason why we aim to have two or more of our team together when we meet with a client, so that in fact there are three of us, including Jesus, present. Imagine the creator of the universe, the one by whose word the world was made, was with you while you work, while you try to solve problems and improve the world around you. Would it help to have the author of life itself, a friend of yours, to give you a few pointers that could get you to a better or faster outcome? I believe this is how Jesus wants to work with us – when he instructed his followers he did not simply say “Make the world better, and good luck with that”, but instead he told them to change nations by sharing his teachings, and then he said: “be sure of this: I am with you always, even to the end of the age.1” I believe he always intended for our work and life to be a collaboration with him.
During our first year in business, we employed Jonathan, a friend who had recently returned from Istanbul where he had been serving as a church missionary. I took Jonathan with me to a client site where I was working on a database system that had been developed over several years and held all of the company’s data. While making some major changes on the server, I accidentally deleted everything – all the company’s database, with no backup. After feeling a cold chill down my spine at the dread of the implications for the client and me, I asked Jonathan to come outside with me since we were working in the client’s open-plan office and I wanted to tell him something. I explained that I had lost the client’s data and asked him to pray with me for the server and the database. Jonathan later told me how surprised he was that we were praying for the computer, but we prayed and in a short while I was advised by a friend – an expert in the client’s database platform – to try something that he said should not work, but did, and the system was restored. I had never been so thankful that God was at work with us!
To be continued…
- Matthew 28:20 NLT