Dan Heckman and Jeff Snader first began working together at a small solutions provider in 2003, developing software for everyone from small law firms to the top Pharmaceutical Companies. However, the joint force of their personalities would not allow them to languish for long at the keyboards of someone else's company. Dan's skills and expertise, gained during his post-graduate work at Drexel, combined with the competitive drive, leadership ability and penchant for push ups that the Marine Corp had instilled in Jeff, drove them to leave their comfortable and somewhat lucrative positions to make a foray into the unstable world of entrepreneurship. Realizing that their true passion was in helping smaller companies succeed, Jeff and Dan started their own technology services company in 2005 and geared it toward small- to medium-sized businesses.
The technology services company did for Dan and Jeff exactly what they hoped. It provided them with a problem they could solve. From the outset they put a premium on research, and over the year that Dan and Jeff ran this technology company they noticed a distinct pattern in client concerns. The vast majority of their customers were worried about the safety of their data. Specifically, they were concerned because they had no way to be sure their backup software was working until they attempted to recover lost or damaged files. Worse, they seemed to be discovering, more often than not, that the backup software was not working or, at least was not working perfectly. If only they could have known this sooner . . . but how?
Unable to find a good solution for their clients, Dan and Jeff did what any self-respecting software developer with a healthy sense of masochism would do. They assembled a team of like minded souls and worked absurd hours, to the detriment of their social lives, bank accounts and carpal tunnels to create a solution. They called that solution
Monitored Backup.
With this idea in hand our burgeoning entrepreneurs needed someone with the resources and business experience to help them develop a viable product that could deliver this solution to the people who needed it. It wasn't long before they realized their long list of concerned, technology services clients might provide the perfect partner, and, before long, it did. It provided Larry Dillon.
Larry, a Wharton School graduate and a successful entrepreneur currently at the helm of Wendover Corporation (top provider of technology and relocation leads;
www.wendovercorp.com), was the key component Dan and Jeff needed to create
Universe Point,
the first monitored backup company. Larry immediately felt that the solution Dan and Jeff proposed would alleviate many of the concerns he and other business owners had about their data backup process, and he was quick to agree to partnership. Larry provided the experience and business savvy that Jeff and Dan lacked. With his input and assistance an office was built, equipment was purchased and work began on finalizing the software that would revolutionize data backup for small- and medium-sized businesses.
And that was how
Universe Point ION was born.