History

As anyone who has ever used JOBZ! can tell you, the program was designed by someone who sold printing. That would be me, Jim Taylor. I sold printing in Silicon Valley for many years, much of that time as a remote rep for a company headquartered in another state. Many of my customers were computer and software companies, so it was natural that I would see if their products could help me with my job. As anyone who has ever been a remote rep can tell you, communications can be a real problem. I started using email before there was an Internet. I graduated from word processing to database software. I started to share the software with my fellow sales reps. Eventually I became a regional VP of Sales, and we made the program do some management duties. It kept getting more and more capable as I learned how to program better. It became the standard of the company's national sales force.

Gradually it dawned on me that I enjoyed developing the software and sharing it with others more than I liked selling printing and being a sales manager. I wondered, can I turn this "hobby" into a job? There are a lot of printing companies out there, thousands of sales reps, and none of them have anything like this. So I did it, back in late 1996. I quit, and started Carpe Data.

The company I worked for then is one of my best customers today, and I spend my time doing what I love- improving the software, and teaching sales reps and managers how to use it. I'd be happy to show it to you.