Much to your dismay, perhaps, I'm not a guy that loves fax. I don't think it's the most interesting technology and it certainly doesn't get my adrenaline pumping. In fact, I despise those offices that make me send faxes -- it's annoying. Yet, as I running a fax company, people are constantly asking me about how I think we're going to revolutionize the "fax sector," and it's a question that I've gotten pretty good at answering.

But people don’t really care about how I’m going to disrupt faxing, that’s just the warmup question. Inevitably, the real question comes out:

“Why are you doing faxing?”

I know the question’s coming like you know the shark is approaching in JAWS. It’s a good question and it’s the right question to ask. After all, I’m wasn’t raised a techie and I don’t have a lab at home where I build my own franken-fax machines. So why would I want to get involved in the fax game? Often times I give my canned answer: “faxing sucks and someone needed to fix it.” It’s a good answer and it immediately provides the inquirer with an understanding of what Phaxio does – makes fax not suck. Sounds good, right? 

It’s a question I think about all the time. The real answer has very little to with faxing at all. The real answer is about the developers to which Phaxio caters. I like helping people find solutions. I like making your life easier. 

Building software is hard and I think developers like and respect the challenge. I just want to be that person that makes it a bit easier. I want to solve a couple of the issues that you’re having, I want to offer you a solution. I like getting that call at 10pm from the developer that’s looking to get his app to send faxes without having to navigate the telecom industry. I like to be the one who says “yes we support all of those filetypes,” or “we render HTML in webkit so you won’t need to worry about that.” 

We’ve done a lot of work to change the way that faxing has been done in the past. Maybe it’s because we’re naive or maybe because we have backgrounds outside of telecom, we’re determined to make fax act the way we want rather than bowing to the established principles. I’ll take the meeting with the big company to negotiate prices or explain to the telecom guys that I can solve their hardware problems using software and an outsider’s perspective. Josh, my co-founder, will work to get you the information, features and an UI that works for you without making you jump through hoops because that’s that part where we kick ass. That excites me. 

Sexy technology is fun, cool and it’s gets big investment money. And, if you’re building the next gamified, HTML5, location based, social network for middle aged newts, then good for you. But if you’re the hacker working on a real solution to a real problem then I want to know you, help you and do whatever I can to make your life easier. I want to be the guy that helps you get that investment round or the job promotion that you’ve been working for day and night.

Fax has long been a industry that’s been forced down developers throats. The technology is old and the ugly api’s that exist are a pain in the ass to use. We’re doing our best to change that. And that, is why we do fax.