Where are we today, and what do we do?
Here's the plain truth: Computan has grown into a Dev Shop that assists marketers and marketing agencies with web and app development. We're HubSpot Partners, but we don't limit ourselves to being just HubSpot developers. We also handle WordPress development, HubSpot integrations, Shopify solutions, custom app development, and more.
Once Upon a Time...
Hi guys, my name is Sajeel, and I’m the VP of Operations at Computan. My marketing teammates asked me to write the ‘Our Story’ page for the website, but I’m not a savvy marketer who can simply write sales text for the casual website visitor. I guess the best way to get answers is to ask questions, so here we go.
Who Runs/Started Computan?
My parents started Computan in 1987…which is about 10 years after my dad immigrated to Canada. My dad came to study at The University of Ottawa in 1977, graduated with a degree in engineering in 3 years, and then got a job as a fresh grad working as a plant manager at General Motors in St. Catharines, Ontario. After working there for 10 years and learning about computers and hardware, my dad saw an opportunity to help bring these amazing machines to individuals and businesses in the town and became the resident town expert. My folks would hold classes in our corporate office showroom, do exhibits at shopping malls, do seminars for corporations, and other things. It seems like he and Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead were doing content marketing before it was really a thing.
My brothers and I would help assemble CPUs, quarantine viruses, clean CPU fans, swap drives, resuscitate printers, and do other stuff way before we hit high school. In Grade 7, I coded my elementary school’s first website… yes, it looked like an 11-year-old did it—yes, I was a bachelor throughout elementary school.
As needs and technology changed, so did Computan’s offering. We sold Internet access and then web hosting and managed IT services. Then, in the mid-late 90s, we evolved into helping marketers and businesses with web development. Development is where we’ve kind of stayed ever since, although the nature of that development and the digital age has changed a ton since then. Looking back, we’ve done a lot of cool stuff over the years…like making the Guinness Book Of World Records for being the first people to live stream a view of Niagara Falls online, building the world’s first web-based tennis ranking system, coding the largest online registry of pedigreed cats and building interactive websites and applications in partnership with the hundreds of marketers we’ve helped support over that time.
Who runs it now? Well, that’s tough to say…there are over 80 members on the team, and solving the problems we solve is a team effort. Because that’s what marketers like you demand of us. I’m the aging veteran on a younger, faster squad who does things way better than I do.
What the ‘freak’ does Computan mean anyway?
Computan is a play on words. Compu stands for computer, and Tan is my dad’s first name. Hence, the name Computan. I’ve tried Googling Computan, and I think it’s a word in Spanish, too. I know nothing about Spanish.