JairoSolutions Blog

For everyone’s knowledge, and possibly amusement, I’d like to share with you my story of JairoSolutions. This is based on my experiences and what JairoSolutions stakeholders have told me. This is not meant to be an official story. The simplest and best word to describe this article is “chismis”. ^_^x

In the beginning there was…

From what I heard, JairoSolutions was already operating in Cebu before settling in Davao. It was Filomeno (Filo) Billones Jr.who left the Cebu branch and started the Davao branch of JairoSolutions. You can say that he was the manager of Jairo Davao at that time. That was around April of 2007. He took care of everything, setting up the office, computers, entertaining the newly hired, and cleaning the office ^_^x. Floor manager ^_^x. Seriously, I’m taking this opportunity to thank Filo for what he has done for the company. If it wasn’t for him, Jairo wouldn’t have made it in Davao. The first office of Jairo was in the Brokenshire Learning System (BLS) IT Incubation Center. This is a free for a year office sponsored by Brokenshire College. Their primary goal was to help/incubate emerging IT companies in Davao. This was a good opportunity for Jairo.

The haunting

I was referred to Jairo by Jan Vincent (JV) Junsay. I was actually looking for a part time job then but Jett needed a full-time employee. But hey, the opportunity was great, so I jumped right in. For the entrepreneur-wanna-be side of me, it has always been my dream to be a part of IT startups. In this case, it was Jairo’s startup in Davao. A good opportunity, lots and lots of things to learn. I had hoped to be heavily involved in the management part of the company, putting pieces together for the growth of the company. Something to put my MBA classes to good use.

I started to work with Jairo on May 25, 2007. JV started around May 15, 2007. My first batch of collegues were Filo, Maico Tamayo, JV, and Simplicio Jison, Jr. And my first reactions of the Brok office was… “this isn’t an office”. ^_^x It was a shipping container, painted in blue, in a jungle (literally). It was located near the ampi-theater area of Brok, near the housing area in Madapo. At night, you would hear a lot of things (ie frogs, crickets, use your imagination). The shipping container was surrounded with other containers for other companies. But as far as I know, we were the only ones there. So it’s kinda freaky for the women. The water source was a 3-5 mins walk. Food source is a 24hr “sira sira” store outside the school that is always crowded with dangerous ex-men and owned by an ex-man named “Ben”. ^_^x The thing I really hate the most in the Brok office was if it was raining and you didn’t bring an umbrella, you’d be 100% super-wet. There are two paths to reach the office, one from the Brok front gate (hospital path) and the Madapo path (leads to Bankerohan, 50% chance of getting mugged or stabbed). Neither path is safe from the rain.

The pioneers

Simplicio (they call him Jong, I call him Cio) works days. Lucky guy. I didn’t get to work with him very long. But I already knew, from the talks that we had, this guy was born a leader/manager/entrepreneur. He’s got all the skills and wits to bring Jairo to the top. It’s like he knew what needs to be done in Jairo without even thinking about it. I really look up to him. Unfortunately he left too early. He would have been a great asset to Jairo. Filomeno, I originally thought he would be older but I guess that was because of his name ^_^x. He was cool, very accomodating, and a very dedicated individual. Maico was the most enthusiastic programmer I’ve ever met. He knew a lot about every technology. And he was the icebreaker of the group. He’s got jokes coming from everywhere. He kept us up during those times. Night-shift is really hard. JV, well, I already knew him well from iThink. He was still the joker who laughs out really loud. So, my first work at Jairo wasn’t really so bad because of these guys. We got along really well.

The Cebu people during these times were Ronald Nuñez, and Christopher Gabijan. I didn’t know them much though.

Coming up next… the transfer of Jairo to Diamond Bldg..