Mark Parker Email & Phone Number

Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

For my full story, with details about each phase of my career, start with my first work experience at the bottom and work your way up. I started Outlier Technologies in 1993 when I was 22 and was the original author/developer of SansWrite. I’m a technology geek and software developer at heart, but I don’t write code anymore.Today I lead a very talented team of men and women who are passionate about the work they do. It was difficult to make the transition from doing the work to managing the work, but it’s rewarding to see what the SansWrite team is accomplishing nowadays.In addition to leading the SansWrite Team, I am focused on building a leadership team, developing strategic partnerships, and planning for the future.

By 2016, the original SansWrite code base had become outdated, so I decided the entire product had to be rewritten from the ground up. It was hard starting from scratch, but also very liberating. In early 2017, another developer and I started the rewrite. This time around, we developed a “framework” that allowed developers to use HTML, JavaScript, CSS and other commonly used technologies to create forms and printouts in SansWrite. We also turned SansWrite into a web application that could work if a user was offline, and on various hardware platforms and screen configurations. Even though we built everything from scratch, it was based on over 20 years of experience. However, while some features could be copied over from the old version, others had to be created from thin air. The most important functionality we added addressed the fact that the flow of the physical inspection didn’t always match the data entry screens. Users took handwritten notes during the inspection and then typed their notes into SansWrite at the end of the inspection. We created two features called mini-inspections and roll-up reporting to solve this issue.After the SansWrite relaunch, we continued to develop new features. In June of 2020, my talented team released the Licensee Portal which allows regulated businesses to submit corrections or plans of correction via SansWrite. We found that by requiring regulated businesses to submit corrections electronically instead of an in-person reinspection, the number of repeat violations decreases.Today, we use data visualization to understand the type and frequency of violations, and put regulatory agencies in a position to do targeted technical assistance to help regulated businesses that are struggling to maintain compliance. SansWrite has evolved from an inspection tool to a true “collaboration platform” that enables regulatory agencies and regulated businesses to work more efficiently to correct violations and prevent them from recurring.

One night in 2012, I was working late and picked up a support call. On the other end of the line was a state inspector who complained about having to constantly find a place to sit and type her reports as she moved from one room to another. Sometimes she ended up sitting on the floor in her nice work clothes to type-up her inspections. After the support call, I got to thinking, and I wondered if we could build a keyboard that someone could hold and type with using ten-fingers while walking or standing. Over the next few months, I researched something called a rear-type or backside keyboard. Microsoft had created just such a concept keyboard a few years earlier, but they abandoned it because only 1 out of 10 participants was able to type fast after using the new keyboard for an hour. I was curious about the one outlier. If one person could learn how to type fast on this type of keyboard, why couldn’t others?I started building wooden models during the evenings and on weekends in my workshop. My concept was a curved keyboard that allowed the user to reach all of the keys while holding the keyboard. I hired a design firm to create a working prototype using components and pieces from other keyboards and was able to reproduce and expand Microsoft’s experiment. What I found confirmed the Microsoft research, that only about 1 out of 10 could get back to 80% of their flat keyboard typing speed after 1-hour. But when we gave the participants more time, 2-hours or 4-hours, a majority of the users could achieve 80% of their flat keyboard typing speed. I had it!I raised $1.2 million in funding from 8 private investors to build a revolutionary keyboard and bring it to market. The keyboard attracted a lot of attention. I fielded hundreds of interviews by major media outlets, was a Best of CES Finalist in 2014, received an invitation and presented at Apple, and was selected as a finalist for the TV show Shark Tank. Stay tuned for what happens next.

Over the course of several years, I served in various positions for the National Association for Regulatory Administration (NARA) and worked with people who were shaping the future of human care licensing internationally. As I served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Finance Committee, I was able to contribute my business knowledge and experience to help the association focus on generating revenue and becoming profitable. I led strategic and operational planning sessions, prepared and oversaw annual budgets, negotiated contracts with the Executive Director and association management company, managed and coordinated an association management company transition, and led the planning and execution of the annual licensing seminar in Cincinnati, OH.I’m thankful I had the opportunity to establish a foundation on which the association has continued to grow and thrive.

To this point, I was the company’s founder, lead developer, and salesman. However, as the company grew I had to hire people. I hired my first employee to help me customize inspections using the Report Builder. The next thing I knew, I had a developer, salesperson, and clerical person. My dad helped out with assembling the hardware.As new sales kept coming in, we hired more people, and my focus shifted from doing the work to managing the work. This was a difficult time for me. The best way I can describe it is I felt like I was losing control. Things got done, but I didn’t know all of the details. In addition, we faced increased competition and it became difficult to sell TurnKey Inspections Systems. We had no sustainable competitive advantage, except for the software.In 1999, the inspection software part of the TurnKey Inspection System was rebranded as SansWrite, and we began to sell the software as a standalone product that could run on any Windows-compatible computer. At the same time, I built a management team. Once the key people were in place, I refocused my attention on the SansWrite Product, or product management.For several years we expanded and enhanced SansWrite. We added a middle-tier to handle data transfers, and a web-based application to automate back-office work.

When I built the original inspection software for the TurnKey Inspection System (see previous work 1993-1996 experience), I overlooked one important fact - there are different types and styles of homes in different parts of the country. I customized the product for each customer but quickly became overwhelmed with the amount of work and time involved. In addition, I couldn’t convince customers to pay for customization.The solution was a database driven user interface, a development technique I learned while working as a co-op student during my senior year of college. This is standard today, but bear in mind that in 1996 the World Wide Web was seen as a fad and there were only 100,000 websites. Today there are over 77 billion. My new interface allowed me to make customizations much more quickly, solving my original problem. Then, a few months later, I developed another application I referred to as the “Inspection Builder.” As luck would have it, a home inspector did an inspection for a government official who was working on a project to automate childcare inspections, and the home inspector passed my contact information along. Soon, I had a meeting with the state.During my first meeting with the state, I demonstrated the system by showing them how to fill-out a home inspection, and at the end of the meeting they asked if the software could be modified for childcare inspections. Using the Inspection Builder, and making a few other tweaks to the inspection software, I was able to pull together a concept within about two-weeks. After a short pilot in 1998, I landed my first government contract.

I started Outlier Technologies in 1993 when I was 22. After I graduated from college with a degree in Computer Science, I paid the bills by providing networking, system admin, hardware/software installation, and software development services to small businesses and government agencies in the Greater Cincinnati area. However, I realized my income would be limited by the number of hours I could bill, so I started looking for opportunities to build a product.In April of 1995, after seeing an ad for a rugged portable computer in VAR Business magazine, I decided to build a portable computer system for my dad and brother’s home inspection business, with dreams of selling the product to an emerging home inspection industry. I worked late nights and many weekends writing the code for the inspection software, and scraped together enough money, roughly $5,000, to buy a rugged computer, portable printer and hard sided carrying case.I provided the proof of concept to my dad and brother to pilot during actual home inspections and used their feedback to further refine the concept into a “finished” product. I then created marketing materials and went to local American Society of Home Inspection (ASHI) meetings to show the product to other home inspectors.Because the system was so expensive, around $9,000, I couldn’t get inspectors to buy the system. To overcome the high price, I partnered with a leasing company and leased systems to inspectors for just $99 per month. At that price, I signed up 8 early adopters. I then used the profits to fund travel and trade show booth space. In January of 1996, the TurnKey Inspection System was unveiled at the ASHI Conference in Las Vegas, and we started taking orders from home inspectors across the country.