It is hard to notice a change when you are in the middle of it. When you are changing it is almost impossible to see a scope or analyze consequences.

I was seven when my genius parents bought our first computer. It was a rare thing in Russia in those days of “Perestroika”. Nobody I knew had one.

I grew up with PC and Windows, these two were deeply embedded in my life. They became part of my identity. By saying that I don’t mean I was a real geek at this point. I only programmed on Basic a little and had no idea how PC worked at all. My brother decided to be a programmer, so I felt urge to be someone else.

Internet arrived and I learned how to make dynamic web-sites using Flash. Oh God, I made such a crap. But those days nobody understood what it was all about, but everybody felt they need it… so even in 98 when Russian economy collapsed I was able to earn some money for the family. I decided to be a web-master.

But a manager too. And a father. And a designer. And a scientologist (yes, a little bit messy… and no, I’m happy not to be a part of this cult anymore).

One day I read “Hackers: heroes of computer revolution” and suddenly realized, that Internet is all about this UNIX thing. GNU manifesto touched me deeply. I installed Linux and discovered the world of Free and Open software.

In few months I migrated completely. I remember this feeling, that I understand how my systems work… it was crucial. I decided that I should understand it all better. I changed my job to fit in that new concept of myself and started to learn things.

I found Perl much more geeky than PHP so… I started to learn Perl. Geeky became synonym of better.

Year after my brother and I founded a company to make web applications using Perl and other adorable technologies. It was crazy. We managed to survive for two years… learning and making on the way… in a way nobody did it around us.

One day I realized it was not working anymore. I came to our biggest client and said: “You know, I want to learn from you how to make a business. This one we created is not sustainable”. (And you’d better hire me, or all your web-sites will decay).

He answered: “You know what. We have this project of ERP system that can’t take off for quite some time, may be you can help with it a bit?”. This ERP system was based on an ugly enterprise technology. It was Windows again. But I was hungry and craving to make something big.

I found my way to succeed. I worked hard, read right books and invested in my team a lot. My brother came to be head of IT and I focused on software development. In three years we built information system that drastically improved business efficiency (I measured our impact).

It was awesome and much more sustainable.

Until, one day, I realized I was done there. I saw clearly that I gathered a team and established a workflow that served that business well. It will adjust to change and evolve with company. And that I believed to be my final product. They didn’t need me anymore.

My boss did not see it this way. He felt like I should stay and work until software project would be finally, totally done. I pointed that software would be finally, totally done only if his business would stop to evolve and die. He insisted I should stay and proposed much more money and power for me. I disappointed him. I quit on the peak of my career.

A year after my ex-team mailed me: they closed ticket number 42 which I created when I just started the project (there were several thousands of other tickets by the time). I was like “Ok. Checked. It is working”.

I worked in gamedev studio. They built fortune by making one of the biggest title in AppStore. I was impressed with energy of mobile and quality of Apple products.

I switched to Mac and iOS, and learnt whole new way of thinking.

Shortly I realized that dedicating myself to game development was dead end. I worked hard but I hated final product.

So I quit again and moved to China.

Suddenly everything about my social life and work changed. It was painful. But at the same time, I felt in love with China, I found it awesome!

I worked as CIO for enterprise again and missed the energy of mobile development very much.

After a few years my ex-ex-ex-boss came to say, that team I created really worked well. He admitted that it was a good product. So… he is willing to invest in me and my efforts to make a great software company.

We decided to base it in Hong Kong and make meaningful apps for iOS.

That was how Ungert Design was started.