Our Story

“Sure, it’s coffee in this mug.”

Justin was born and raised right here in Richmond. He has lived here all his life, met his wife here, is raising his son here – and quite frankly, will probably push up daisies here. Justin’s love of computers started early with the same thing that gets every young boy excited about computers: video games. Fortunately, the obsession has matured – where once he dreamed of beating the final boss in “Contra,” he now dwells on how customers will use Simple Thread’s products. Justin hasn’t lost all of his boyish charms, though. In his spare time, he reads copious amounts of science fiction and watches too much Netflix. But he also likes to cook, partake in some craft beers, and play soccer with his son. In true grown-up form, Justin dreams of one day buying a house out in the country … so that his wife will stop bugging him about it.

• Favorite Book: Is it Sci-fi? Does it have aliens? Yeah, that one.
• Favorite Activity: Spending time with family and friends

“Ninja skills! Ninja skills!”

Forgive Al if he’s staring into the distance, remembering technology’s glorious past. He might see visions of “Space Invaders,” recalling the inspiration he found in his brother’s Atari 2600 – so much joy in such a little box! Or perhaps he’s reflecting on his embrace of the Internet just before the Web took off – oh, the welcoming ethos of early BBS and Usenet! But firmly in the present, Al has a passion for improving lives through software – whether a simple tool to automate a tedious back-office process or a product that helps a client launch a business. Al grew up on the Gulf Coast near Mobile, Ala., and made his way to U.Va. He settled in Charlottesville, and when away from the computer, he loves cooking for family, hiking in the Appalachians … and secretly enjoying British detective shows that his wife forces him to watch. He also buys more books than one man could ever read (see below).

• Favorite Book: Dune… no wait… Jitterbug Perfume… uh… The Jamais Vu Papers? Too many …
• Favorite Activity: Making his daughter laugh

“You like the beard, right?”

Alex has spent most of his life here in the Richmond area – and loving computers (he has been coding since age 13). With experience in databasing, middleware and user interfaces, he is a real tech enthusiast who loves to build the engines that drive beautiful, robust web applications. Alex relishes the challenge of solving problems, though he has yet to figure out how to outdo his wife and their three kids when playing water war outside during the summer. You can find him at the Kings Dominion theme park on summertime Saturdays… and, when he can fit it in, at the gym (a guy’s gotta work off all those funnel cakes, after all).

• Favorite Book: 1984
• Favorite Activity: Riding rollercoasters

“The lightsaber attracts birds.”

When Stephen isn’t busy coding, his favorite pastime is bird watching – no word, though, on whether the birds like watching him, too. He routinely travels to find and photograph birds, and we wonder if this passion for tracking things might have something to do with his experience in RFID solutions. Closer to home, Stephen enjoys exploring the parks of Charlottesville with his wife, Holly. He’s also a soccer fan, and his house actually resembles a sports bar – there is always at least one game on in the background. So if Barca goes to the birds, you can bet Stephen is already there.

• Favorite Book: Harry Potter
• Favorite Activity: Bird watching

“T-shirts ARE business casual!”

David grew up in rural Iowa and spent half his life in east Tennessee before moving to the “Big City” (Richmond, that is – and it’s an accurate description next to Johnson City). David worked at East Tennessee State University as a software engineer for eight years and received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees there. Though he has spent most of his professional life working with .Net, he does enjoy branching out into the open-source world. David also loves games of all kinds – be they sports, video, or board games. His interest in the latter was particularly rekindled when he first played “The Settlers of Catan” and learned about the realm of Eurogames. It wasn’t long before “Agricola” and “Puerto Rico” took over his dining room table. But he tries to leave enough room there for dinner: David likes to cook, exploring new dishes or better ways of cooking old dishes to the delight (usually) of his wife.

• Favorite Books: Moneyball and A Storm of Swords
• Favorite Activity: Canoeing

“Hacking the commute by listening to a tech podcast.”

Don’s been coding since before Windows and Linux, much less the Internet. In the early nineties, Don moved from RPG and Cobol to C and C++. He adopted Java before it was real: 1996. After coding his way through the proliferation of Java frameworks (including Struts, Spring, and EJB) Don pined for the Convention-over-Configuration framework of Ruby and Rails. Don did Groovy and Grails before finally moving to Rails in 2011. Don enjoys writing and has published a couple of books and hundreds of technical articles. Don has been working from home since last century. When Don is not working, he loves spending time with his 3 grandchildren. To keep his mind young, Don reads and listens to novels in Italian. And, to keep his body young, Don is an avid off-road and street unicyclist.

• Favorite Book: The Hobbit
• Favorite Activity: Unicycling

Poring over Visual Basic code at 2 a.m. for YY formats back in 1999 – gripped with the harrowing fear of Y2K – was the necessary encouragement for Brian to explore a business development roles in software for most of his 20-year career. That same night, Brian realized which part of his job he loved most. It was those rare whiteboarding sessions where he helped clients constrained by technological choices extricate themselves from costly business problems. That track led Brian to work with some of the world’s largest enterprises while at IBM Software in sales, operations and architecture roles.

Brian was diagnosed with a debilitating case of New York Jets Fandom at the age of 14. Ever since, Brian has enjoyed hopeful springs and summers followed by morose autumns and winters. As a cathartic outlet while living in Massachusetts, Brian created a blog about the Jets which he later sold to the New York-based TV network SNY. Now residing in the Old Dominion, Brian enjoys adventuring east and west of the Blue Ridge with his wife and three children on weekends in search of The World’s Greatest Donut.

• Favorite Book: Great Expectations
• Favorite Activity: Traveling around Virginia

Coming soon.

Coming soon.

Coming soon…