I’m Mike Seidle. I’m probably best known for being the father of five incredible kids, and as the husband of education rock star Claudia Seidle. I’m an entrepreneur, software developer and sometimes outdoorsman.
I’ve been coding since age 12 . I learned on a TRS-80 Models III, a TI-99/4a and Apple IIe. One day my dad brought home a PC clone and that was it. I finally had a machine that could run real languages like C, Pascal and Prolog. Ever since I’ve been building software and occasionally trying to build companies around that sofware. I’ve also spent about ten years as an enterprise sales representative and sales manager at companies like Vanstar, Inacom, and Expanse. Right now, I’m working on PivotCX – a startup that is heling companies transform hiring to compete in 2022’s crazy talent market.
My Companies
PivotCX – My current company. We’re helping companies fix broken recruiting by equipping and teaching them to adopt a new model that emphasizes speed over risk aversion. PivotCX has been particularly rewarding – we’re helping companies turnaround time to hire.
Virual Payment Systems – A niche credit card and ats payment processor that specializes in card payments for law firms and big ticket services. VPS lets you shift fees to the payer, is trust account secure, and ensures that you are paid 100% of the amount due (which is required for payments to a law firm’s trust account).
ProBlog Service – Started in 2006, ProBlog was a social media agency that helped companies tackle executive blogging and establishing a presence on new at the time social networks like “the Facebook”, LinkedIn, Twitter, MySpace and then market leader Friendster. I ProBlog to the employees in 2009.
IndyAssociaties – In 2002, I started a digital marketing company. We started with SEO and SEM, then started building e-commerce and marketing websites. We were unabashedly proud of using open-source software – WordPress, Joomla (well, it was called Mambo), Django and even a few Zope/Plone projects.
FocalPoint Consulting – In 2002, After three years in the CRM business selling GoldMine and HEAT software, I started my own CRM consulting company.
WRT Technologies – I started a networking integrator in 1990 when I was a student at Ball State. We wired offices up with ethernet and installed their first-ever network servers using Novell Netware. I also developed some software – one of my favorites was a system that let medical transcriptionists upload their work using WordPerfect Macros to a server with multiple modems running a custom REXX-based server.
In Between Startups
Between startups I’ve worked in sales, marketing and software engineering roles at companies like Vanstar, Inacom, Expanse, AutoNation, and DirectEmployers Association. I never thought that I would be in sales or marketing, but learning to sell has been a priceless skill.
Software Development
My favorite languages are Python, Go and C. I love Python’s expressiveness and readability. I’ve been building with Go for a couple of years, and it fills a niche for a safe language that goes fast, like C. I learned how to “program for real” in C, and it’s been my go to for close-to-the hardware, high performance code. I’m hoping that Rust, Zig or Nim can eventually unseat C as my preferred systems programming language… it’s just too easy to make big security mistakes in C. Over the years I’ve been fortunate to get to work with a lot of different platforms (Vax, PC, AWS, Google Cloud, Windows, Mac, Unix and Linux) and languages including Java, C++, ObjectiveC, REXX, Prolog, Lisp and Javascript. I’ve got to do embedded systems, GUI prgrams, mobile apps, and tons and tons of web software. It’s all fun.