Normally a family and friends program“ is known, when a company goes public. The company invites their employees and the family and friends of their employees to become shareholder of the company for a discounted price. This is not about GWAVA going public. I have no information, if there are any plans of going public in the future, but if so, I would not be the guy to publish something in a personal blog entry. The thing I wanted to “talk” about is a different kind of “family and friends program”. It is nothing written down in any contract or company guide, it is part of the culture of this company. 

I have been in hospital about 3 weeks ago to get an operation (nothing very serious, however it was painful). After the operation I had to spend two weeks at home. It was the first time ever in my business life, that I did spend more than 1 week in total (except holiday of course) not being able to work. The first two weeks I was mainly concentrating on my health and pain issues. The last week I got much better and I had a “good” time with my family (my wife Andrea and my two kids Hannah and Christopher). 

I also had some time to think about different things. I forced myself not to think about business related issues, because I know by heart, that this is a non-stopable process for me. But my thoughts were however concentrated on GWAVA somehow, not so much on the business side, but on the personal side.

GWAVA for me is a second family, taking care about me in good as well as in bad times. GWAVA is much more for me, than a company where I do earn my money. It is not a typical public US based softwarecompany on the stock market, where the quarterly results always have highest priority. Our two owners Marc and Charles take care about the people within GWAVA and in return the people are delivering great work and good results. 

The “friends” part is also very important for me. Out of the GWAVA business I got so many friends all over the world – I´m only going to name a few of them here (Ken/Kim, Ernie, Richard, … in the US, Marc, Charles, Taylor, Carsten, Perry…. In Canada, Vaclav in Czech Republic, Laurence, Chris, John in the UK,  Dirk, Ronel, Corne in South Africa, Roel, Ronald, Cor …. in the Netherlands, Paul and Johan in Belgium,  Josef in Italy, Andreas and Horst in Switzerland, “Dynamite” Tommy in Denmark, Didi and Volkmar in Austria and of course “tons” in my own little country Germany). I have to travel a lot, but the chance to combine business with meeting one of my friends is huge.  So within my daily work for GWAVA I created a network of friends in a lot of countries. 

GWAVA for me is the best company I have ever worked for.  This company offers me a great job and besides that, it is a second type of family for me and created a huge worldwide network of friends. And this is not just an internal thing/behavior. We honor our relationships with our customers and partners in the same way. Everything within GWAVA is build on trust and long term relationship. That is the reason, why the huge majority of our customers and partners are very happy with GWAVA and are staying with GWAVA. 

Whenever GWAVA might go public in the future, I ´m going to participate in the “normal” Family and friends program as well. There might be companies, which might be more successful as GWAVA, but I doubt if there is any company, which is “treating” their employees and customers/partners in the same way.