Here we were with this cool product, ArchiOffice. But I knew that it wasn't going to be the only thing we would make. So we needed a company name. After a couple of hours of brainstorming - and nothing seeming to be a "winner," I looked up and saw the huge, orange conference room wall. And of course, our office was in a loft building. Eureka! Orange Loft. It means absolutely nothing. If we wanted - we could evolve the company into anything from selling sweaters to doing bicycle repair. And it also had a name that would resonate somewhat in the Architectural and Design communities. Which, of course is where we belong.

Orange Loft was created out of my original efforts to develop a management software program for my own Architectural firm, Burns + Beyerl Architects. Those were the good ol’ days. I can’t tell you how many nights I was up until 4am working on the program, and then, the following morning, racing to work to upload it so everyone could use it. It was like an addiction; The more I worked, the more the people at my office told me how cool it was and what else they wanted it to do. I’d rush home in the evening and after putting the kids to bed, I’d get back to work. I was even taking a computer with me on vacations so I could keep building the software. And this was in the days before I had a laptop. It was a sick addiction.

The image to the left was the home screen for my original ArchiOffice. Click to enlarge. After 3 years of this blissful addiction, I was introduced to Richard Becker, by an employee of mine who used to work for him at his firm Becker Architects. Richard came to my office and looked at the software I had built for my firm. He asked if I could put it in his office (a bold request from a competing Architect). But, I couldn’t resist the offer - and after 3 months of additional tweaking, I loaded ArchiOffice in his firm, gave his employees a brief explanation of how it worked - and let them rip it apart. To make a long story - short, after one year of use, Richard asked if he could invest in it so we could turn it into a commercial product. Hurrah! Finally a way to break my addiction. Now we had to hire “real” programmers who would be responsible for making a commercial quality version of my prototype.