We have a plan here at CompuMatter.

Replicating The Store Model

If one does not set their sights on some distant point, how will they ever hope to arrive there?

Let me step you through not only the dream but the reason we believe it is attainable.

CompuMatter’s store model is quite unique. We are not just a “Computer Repair” place. Those are common enough indeed.

We have taken the time to indentify the 4 computer related needs that customers will most likely come in contact with in their lifetime if not on a regular basis.

Those 4 things are Repairs, Websites, Sales and Training. Up till our store model, filling those 4 needs would have involved going to multiple service providers.

For us the dream starts with further refinement of our existing store model and then replication of our CompuMatter store model to other locations. In the end we dream to create a Starbucks ‘sized’ store that is similar to our existing CompuMatter in Anacortes that would fit neatly into neighborhoods and cities across the country and the world.

We have a labor reduction plan that involves virtual technicians that provide expertise to multiple locations at once but we won’t take you too far down that road right now, I think you get the idea.

Our 10 years in business, on top of the my 4 decades of experience technology give us an expert vantage point for understanding the substantial complications that running a computer store with this variety entails.

That may sound like a dream to you but to us, it’s just the means to an end.

Animals & Environment

People that know me through my computer store consider me “the computer guy”. However, my sons, my brothers, my nephews, neices, best friends and others know me as the animal guy.

Since my very first memories I have been fascinated by life and all the forms it takes. From the tiniest of microscopic things to the dinosaurs of times past and everything in between. The heroes in my heart are humans like Steve Irwin, Jane Goodall & Paul Watson (whale wars) and companies like the Humane Society, Mercy for Animals, PETA, Nature Conservancy and all the others like them that feel that same empathy for animals and have dedicated their lives to awakening others about what makes them special as well as the plights they face.

Factory Farms: I am not a vegatarian though I admire those that are. I respect that kill or be killed is constant theme of nature down to the tiniest forms they take. However, I make an important distinction. I will not eat any meat that has lived the tortured life of a factory farm. No animals first view of life should be a living hell nor should it be sentenced to remain in hell for what time it is alive. Every animal deserves love, play and a reason to belive tomorrow might be better than today.

It is easy for us to buy a packaged sirloin or dozen eggs as we are not forced to see or feel that suffering. I force myself to see the truth and I should not ignore what I see and feel.

Factory farms a global problem and a garganuan one. As long as people like you and me turn a blind eye to the process, it will surely continue and get worse. We are after all catering to the efficiencies of a stock market economy. An economy that says we should make the process of raising them cheaper, the cost of killing them cheaper so we can increase our profit margins and pay the dividends back to the stock holders. The individual stock holders care about their returns. The board members care about their jobs which are voted on by the stock holders. The animals cannot win this battle if consumers don’t change it all from the bottom up by not buying animals raised this way.

The Pet Trade
Humans like pets. We are the only species that keeps other species for our entertainment. I love pets too. I have had a dog for most of the last 4 decades. There’s a couple of things about the pet trade that I don’t like. I don’t like to see pets neglected, treated poorly or even with deadly force. I don’t like to see pit bulls pitted against themselves. I don’t like to see millions of dogs and cats killed in our nations animal kill shelters each year while the same number of prettier pedegree breeds are paid for on the other end of the turn style. When you go to a pound and look into the eyes of an animal with a death sentence how can you leave that place and order a new breed in advance of their birth? It happens because people turn a blind eye to the first problem.

Exotic pets are an entire other problem. Reptiles (lizards, snakes, turtles) that are born into wild warm places are shipped everywhere confined to a tank often alone. If they are lucky they will die of old age alone. If they are in the unlucky 90%+ they will die from neglect, poor conditions (lighting, moisture etc) or the wrong nutrition requirements. If the exotic pet owner resides in a warm place they will typically release them into the wild and give their friend a shot at surviving. This of course results in the sentencing much of the local animals to death by exotics as it has done in Florida.

Wild Animals Habitat Destruction
The world over humans are eroding the wild places. In Africa, Florida, here in Washington State where I live it’s all the same. It starts with a single biscecting road. Then another. Then those 4 quadrants are further biscected. Sub-divisions go in. Old growth trees are removed. Underbrush is removed. Sterile lawns are planted. Wildlife scatter and those that cant adjust get killed on those same roads. One sub-division or city at a time it all goes away. The builder makes money, the city makes money. Humans do what the do. Wildlife looses.

Our method of agricultural / farming is of course another huge taker of natural things. One trip in an airplane reveals a patchwork quilt of farms that reveal what can’t be imagined from the ground.

This needs to change. If we can put a man on the moon we can figure out how to create habitat for ourselves that does not take from nature in this way. We can re-invent agriculture and farming in a way that is vertical, or rotational. We cannot just keep spreading sideways and taking. We cannot just keep poisining the planet with chemicals.

Corrupt Government – Special Interest Lobbyists

The same companies that profit from the bad things I have described above are insuring their own survival by paying lobbyists to wine and dine each governments policy makers. This is a corrupt system that up till now has been unstoppable. Big Oil, Big Agriculture, Big Pharma are the well known ones. Beyond those there are many huge trade organizations that receive payments from every small business in their profit stream to support the lobbying efforts protecting their industry.

This is not how it should be done. Environment, nature, animals, our health. It all matters and cannot be for sale. But it is… and has been sold, many times over.

Our Mission

Our mission is to become a global company. A company as large or larger than a Starbucks. However unlike Starbucks, Google, Facebook or others, we want to take all profits over and above cost of operations and expansion and direct it to the kinds of things I have spoken about in previous paragraphs.

Companies like the Humane Society, PETA and others I have mentioned rely upon handouts. They are beautiful and I love them but their ability to control their destiny are compromised by this fact. Our company will be unique in that it is the only for profit company I am aware of whose purpose for existing is to make a difference in the lives of animals. To be in essense, the voice of factory farmed animals. The voice of animals made vulnerable by us whereever they occur.

I am certain that if people are buying a computer service and if all other things are equal they would certainly rather see their money effecting a cause for good.

I can see a future where CompuMatter’s everywhere are able to display material about the animals plights and what we are doing about it. I can see how we will be positively effecting the shoppers we are serving.

I see a future where we are able to afford our own lobbying arms to wine and dine. I can see ‘Think Tanks’ of people that draft the plans that cause society to change from the bottom up.

I can see addressing the challenges of turning wildlife hunting into tourism viewing. I can see the challenges of changing death by sub-division into sustainable habitable mini eco-systems that allow for old growth and the animals that need it.

Financing The Expansion

This is a tricky one. I probably don’t need to tell you that the Facebook, Google’s and Microsoft’s of the world made their billions by going public on the stock market. Frankly, I think we bring the goods right now to go over venture capital if we so chose. However there’s one thing all venture capitalists want and that is to go public. Going public means the big day on the NY Stock Exchange that turns investors into millionaire’s and billionaire’s and then the company itself, CompuMatter, is owned by the millions of people who have invested in it. We are owned by the public but more importantly, their investment is expected to be multiply and returned to them in the form of dividends.

Dividends will not change the world. They will only perpetuate the brokenness I have already spelled out. That is not CompuMatter’s reason for existing. Getting wealthy is not the reason I work so hard each day, month or year. More importantly, if I do not carry this ball to the goal line, who will take my place. How many more animals will die because I cared more about personal enrichment than trying to force a pardigm shift on humanities view of these problems. I’m going for the pardigm shift.

Here is my plan for finances. Frankly I know I am nieve in matters of global finance and my overall sense of scale given the job at hand. Let’s face it, it’s daunting by any possible measure. Having said that, in the whole scheme of things it does not matter. It must be attacked face on, with the full faith of my convictions and without any reservation or hesitation. Things will continue to come into focus as the resources allow for it. There is no blueprint as it hasn’t been done before. I have certainly learned that is how things get done, whatever they are.

I have garnered significant expertise in a huge variety of technology in areas of hardware, software, servers, systems and to a lesser degree networking. I am in a position to know the staying power or lifecycle of new technology. I have watched the winners and loosers of technology rise and fall throughout the years.

I cannot cover in detail the 4 decades of my experience in this short mission statement. That is beyond the scope of this document. However, it is important for you to sense that I have the knowledge and depth of experience to sit at the helm of such an enterprise and the ability to parlay our technology into an income producing foundation to the mission at hand.

That said, I have brought to the finish line to major pieces of technology that are not in it of themselves created from scratch but instead take advantage of existing products and make them more usable. One is a website technology that utilizes the benefits of a WordPress engine while making possible the development of custom websites (not themes and templates). It allows for the creation of any website from a blank slate or imagination and not relying upon the themes and templates currently dependended upon. Moreover it includes a variety of plugins created by CompuMatter that allow clients to add content, especially multi-media, in a much more simplified way than ever before possible. We also have created new methods of making that content more easily digestable to the viewer of the websites.

We are currently designing the marketing materials that will launch this new website technology into public awareness. The website you are reading this on is one example of this technology.

This technology has world wide potential. The plugins we’ve created can be sold to developers the world over on their existing websites. The core technology can be used to lure new clients to our own website creation arm of CompuMatter. This new product in it of itself could support a salesforce both inside and outside, a call center, and industry specific websites of all kinds could be created using this new technology’s codebase. There are aspects of the technology that simply do not exist in the marketplace.

A small example of its supremecy is in the area of scaleable fonts. At present fonts do not scale up or down based on screen size. Not with any product anywhere. Not any website, not any Word document. You must manually make the change in Word, and websites it simply does not happen. Ours do. There are many other ground breaking changes which is beyond the scope of this document however it is important you recognize we have a large arrow in a quiver preparing to be launched.

Another large arrow is the creation of our new server technology. Small Business Servers are used the world over to accomplish a variety of tasks. I have found through my decades of business dealings that most businesses only use a small piece of a servers potential. Moreover I find that 95% of small businesses are asking for solutions to the same problems ie; shared calendars, team password management, remote quickbooks access, folder / file permissions, digital asset file management, backup solutions (offsite and on) and the list goes on. Most times their server does a few of these but only a few. The remainder go on as unmet needs or they hobble together some collection of subscription programs to take care of some of the other. Ultimately it is one big half done job of making their business efficient.

CompuMatter has taken the time to identify the very best open source software to accomplish these goals. We’ve then brought the best of the best of these software products together and installed them on a Linux server environment and weaved them all together to create what is the worlds single most powerful small business server solution. We then set out to identify the best hardware for this technology to live on and the ServerMatter Small Business Server was born. This server technology has been tested thoroughly. It runs our store here at CompuMatter and has been sold and tested perfectly in the field with other businesses.

This server which will have its own website at http://abusinessserver.com/ also has world wide potential. It fills a totally different need than the website technology yet both are natural feeds to business from each others clients since both are products and services needed by small to medium sized businesses the world over.

So the plan is to sell our website and server technology to the public directly. I can imagine a sales machine whereby salespeople will be both in the field and within call centers. I can also imagine building relationships with resellers of our technology whereby we support it and they sell it.

So, how do we get from here, to there? The answer is between my ears. I will be open to ideas and pushing as far and as fast as my existing finances will allow me. However the truth being told, my existing finances are miniscule compared to the job at hand. So it is my intention to providing a public crowd funding opportunity where like-minded people can contribute in an effort to help me get this rocket off the pad.

Crowd funding provides the most realistic opportunity for a business venture such as this one to be launched in the most forcefull way yet not having sold its soul and its future in the process. We will be looking for “believers” in the goal that are willing to contribute in the ways that they can, however small or large that may be.

Once the rocket is launched, we will be self-sustainable. Unlike the existing animal rights groups or other ultruistic and wonderful charity models in this world ours will be a shining example of how a business can change the world. Perhaps a model like ours will become the norm and not the exception. Good inventions and ideas can help to make the world a better place be it animals, children, elderly, environment or whatever drives a person to their highest heights.

In Closing

Someone asked me once why all this focus on animals. What about poor people, children, disease and the myriad of human conditions that need help?

The first though to occur to me was that this did not have to be a divisive response. My response was that we are all pre-disposed to the things in this world that what we care about. It may be music, cooking, dancing, animals or children (or all of the above 😉

Let the people who’s highest passion is for the children, elderly, animals or other good things make it their life’s work to make those things better. These are ultimately who those vulnerable things would want for their protection. We do not have to be one thing at the exclusion of another. Humanity can be a collage of good things serving to protect the many vulnerable things in this world.

For me it is about the animals. It always has been. It is just ‘me’. That is my mission.

Every dime you spend here, helps make that mission become a reality.

That is CompuMatter’s mission.