Mercurial No More

“32 of your friends joined the (FaceBook) group ex-Mercs.”

Yesterday, I found out that Victoria, BC, Canada software consultant development company Mercurial Communications is no more, though you wouldn’t know it looking at their web site.¹

I only worked there a short time, but it was a great time, full of learning, laughing and creating great software, as wrote in my article “No longer a Merc“.

Writing this article, I am reminded of the informational interview I had with Mercurial CEO Chris Coldwell, which Chris Campbell helped me arrange, prior to me graduating from university. Although it seemed that there was an opportunity to be further explored with his company, his insights helped me solidify my decision to join IBM. Although Mercurial was not the company then in 2000 that it later became, the generosity of Chris Coldwell stuck with me — and I have been told numerous similar stories.

Chris Coldwell greatly cares about his people, and I imagine thse events are very hard for him (and also on his right hand person Leon Carl who also cares enormously about the people he works with).

The good news is that the technology industry in Victoria is very healthy, and I am certain that all the wonderful ex-Mercs will be back on top soon.

Mercurial itself was on the very top mid-year 2005, a few months before I left. This was reflected in Mercurial winning numerous awards that year and continuing to be among Profit Magazine’s Top 100 Fastest Growing Companies.

Since I left Mercurial, it has been on a spiralling fall, and many mercs had left before this end.²

As I have written before, I do know some of these wonderful people well, and quite a few of them joined the Flock: Raj Paul (no longer), Joshua McKenty, Richard Phan, Steve Bengston,³ Chris Campbell⁴ , Jacky Zhang⁵ , Ishika Paul, Clayton Stark, Rick Tessner (was contract), Brij Charan, Mark Lise, Marcus Redivo, Bryan Hudson, Ryan Tomaselli, Len Kirby, Justin Louie, and now Leon Carl! That is one fantastic team!⁶⁷

I look forward to seeing the great things ahead for Chris Coldwell and all us ex-Mercs.

1. I am told Mercurial Communications has filed bankruptcy, but I have seen nothing official. I have had multiple, reliable reports that Mercurial is no more. [↩]
2. I am sure there is an interesting story about how Mercurial fell so far and so hard, but I don’t know it, and I find it less interesting than where ex-Mercs are going next. [↩]
3. Flock gets northern riches [↩]
4. Chris Campbell joins Flock [↩]
5. Jacky Zhang Flocks [↩]
6. A year later Shawn Hardin announces some of the newer members of the Flock team, unfortunately some of the awesome people I have included here are still some of Flock’s best kept secrets. [↩]
7. Hilarious quote from Joshua McKenty written Mar 24, “The fact that Victoria hosts the largest concentration of Mozilla developers outside of the Bay Area is purely coincidental.” [↩]