012005
PetroQuick
Start with a real decision.
Economic evaluation software developed for operating needs became a business helping people evaluate drilling and acquisition opportunities.
ABOUT 8BRAID / THE IDEA BEHIND THE ENGINE
A more connected world.
Privacy and control
at its core.
I saw the possibility of connecting people, organizations and the world around them far more deeply, while preserving privacy, security and control over their information.
THE POSSIBILITY
Relationships give
information its meaning.
In 2007, studying Facebook’s feed, I recognized what persistent identities and explicit relationships made possible: software could use context to route and prioritize information.
A person occupies a home. A company operates a well. A technician is responsible for a machine. Each relationship carries relevance, responsibility or a reason to act.
What if we could make more of those connections useful, while keeping people in control?
FROM INSIGHT TO EXECUTION
One question.
Successive ventures.
Each chapter brought the idea closer to real work, and exposed another part of the foundation it needed.
022007
LifeSocket
Make relationships useful.
People, homes, neighbourhoods and municipalities connected through relationships that could determine participation and communication rights.
What happened next
The business did not succeed. The question of useful relationships and controlled participation continued into later work.
032010
PetroFeed
Connect an industry.
Rig locations, operating status, operators and well history came together in a mobile product built around the work of an industry.
042019
SmartGrid & TELUS work
Connect the physical world.
Software, sensing and the use of buildings brought another set of real-world relationships into focus.
05Today
8Braid
Rethink the foundation.
An embeddable, omnimodal database: a foundation for the different forms of information a real problem requires.
Venture chronology follows Ashley’s professional history ↗. Dates mark chapter beginnings; these were separate ventures.
PETROFEED / AN IDEA IN PEOPLE’S HANDS
A connected view
of a working industry.
Our team brought rigs, wells and operators into an accessible mobile map. Someone looking at a rig could understand where it was, what it was doing and the operations associated with it.
Read the contemporary coverage ↗REPORTED IN AUGUST 2014
Canada’s most-downloaded
business app.
A reported weekly milestone for PetroFeed’s mobile application. The same coverage reported $3.1 million in seed financing.
Source: 26 August 2014 coverage. Historical result, not a current ranking.FOLLOWING THE PROBLEM DEEPER
One machine.
Many kinds of information.
A component is failing.
What is affected, who needs to know,
and what can they do?
The answer crosses representations.
Across my work, I kept encountering the effort of fitting information into different structures and maintaining the connections between them.
That drew me toward atomic composition: foundational elements and rules that combine into richer structures, preserving identity and relationships as we move between levels.
Explore the data models in 8DB ↗Explanatory illustration. It does not represent a benchmark or customer deployment.
DESIGN COMMITMENTS
Trust belongs in the foundation.
What should
be revealed?
Useful participation should respect the boundaries around personal and organizational information.
How is information
protected?
Native encryption and post-quantum protection are central design priorities, alongside the ability to evolve the cryptography over time.
Who gets access,
and on what terms?
Relationships and permissions should give people a meaningful say in how their information is shared.
WHAT I AM BUILDING TOWARD
Expansive ambition.
Concrete work.
8Braid brings that long-term vision into a concrete engineering effort: an embeddable, omnimodal database designed to work with the different forms of information a real problem requires.
The opportunity I see is to give developers more of that connected foundation, so they can spend more of their effort on what their applications make possible.
I want to build a company where the ambition is expansive and the work is concrete: make the architectural choices, demonstrate the capabilities and measure what changes for the people using them.
Start a conversation on LinkedIn ↗For customers, investors and people interested in contributing to the work.