I imagine every company has a moment like this, where its founder decides to take a leap of faith. Faith in himself, the product, and the promise of success.

For Websystems and project management software, this moment happened in the Fall of 2001. Back then, Daniel worked out of his two-bedroom appartment, and AceProject was called FreeTaskManager. 

Daniel and I met when we both worked at Multitel, and lost our jobs in the post-9/11, dotcom crash layoffs. I was a technical marketing coordinator and he was a software developer. Daniel had put together AceProject's predecessor, FreeTaskManager, and I was working with him on the interface terminology and documentation.

So it was that we both ended up jobless. The logical course of action would be to look for another job, and keep FreeTaskManager as a sideline. Or was it?

This is when the leap of faith happened. As we were working on FreeTaskManager, Daniel stopped, thinking. He said:

"Karine, do you believe in FreeTaskManager? Do you think I should focus on growing my business, instead of looking for a job?"

This was not difficult to answer at all. FreeTaskManager was awesome. I already believed in FreeTaskManager. And I said exactly this to Daniel. No doubt he asked this question to many persons around him before taking his decision - Daniel is not the impulsive type. But once his mind is made, he will stick to his guns.

And here we are, seven years later. AceProject is, according to Alexa, the third most visited site related to project management software. We are now a bigger team, and we are still working on making online project management software that rocks. 

 The story of Websystems: from sideline to full-time gig to employees and having an office