Some of the Points Scott and Craig Discussed

• At least 25% of the work we do is re-work (because we can't find the original or don't realize it exists)
• At least once a week, 42% of professionals knowingly use incorrect information because they can't locate accurate data
• We spend one-third of our careers searching for stuff we need to do our jobs
• 80% of stored corporate information (archives, shared drives, databases, file folders) is useless
• 50% of stored corporate information is never retrieved
• Asking a colleague where to find something costs $30; querying a knowledge-sharing system costs 8 cents
• Americans generate 10 billion documents a year and copy them 19 times
• 70% to 80% of knowledge-sharing systems fail because people won't use them

About Scott

Scott Ryser is a technical guy with a head for business and an entrepreneurial spirit. Over the past 20 years he has designed, built and/or managed IT initiatives ranging from $50K pilot projects to billion-dollar enterprise overhauls using Internet technologies. A serial entrepreneur (Yakabod is his third company), Scott's corporate experience includes management positions with two national system integrators. He is the lead vocalist for the rock band milenine and a member of Business Executives for National Security. Scott earned an MSEE from The Johns Hopkins University and a BSEE from University of Akron.

About Yakabod

Who is Yakabod?

We’re folks doing stuff that matters. Yakabod was founded in 2001 by a couple of technology pioneers tired of wasting billable hours on stuff that didn’t matter. In search of more meaningful work, they decided to shake up the atrophied world of enterprise software—specifically, the catchall category labeled “knowledge management.”

Scott Ryser and Scott Williamson figured there was no reason large-scale KM couldn’t be as intuitive as an iPhone, as secure as Fort Knox, and deployable in weeks instead of years. So they spent the next few years bringing their vision to life, with Scott W. holed up in a Virginia farmhouse writing code and Scott R. running operations from his spare bedroom.

Version 1.0 of the Yakabox debuted in 2003, and the United States Department of Defense bought the first one. Today, thousands of Yakabox users worldwide use the system to accomplish real work—stuff that matters—instead of hunting for, waiting for, and re-creating the information they need to do their jobs.

We’re committed to lives that matter. It’s satisfying to go home at night knowing our efforts count. Rather than generating piles of meaningless paper (and lines of meaningless code), at Yakabod we’re doing all we can to make work more interesting, human beings more productive, and the world a better place. 

Yakabod is a software company founded in 2001 by CEO Scott Ryser and CTO Scott Williamson. The firm is headquartered in historic Frederick, MD, just outside the Capitol Beltway. Privately held and profitable, Yakabod’s year-over-year growth has averaged 55%-since 2001. Yakabod’s flagship product, the Yakabox™ Knowledge Network, is used daily for secure collaboration worldwide by 20,000 U.S. Intelligence Community professionals.