Juizi origin story
(or: How Juizi was almost called B2)
The early days
When Johan was in his 20s, he founded what would today be called a startup. Linearis CC was registered on 30 January 1996 with the Registrar of Companies and Close Corporations (today's CIPC).
That was the third name choice on his list (nr 2 was B2, and nr 1 was the name of his dog at the time, CalvinB).
The company was originally founded to be an investment vehicle for shares and stocks, but by 1999 this changed. At the time Johan was working as an Electronic Engineer at a company that built bottling equipment and the CC was his side hustle. While trying to register domains for his day job he got so frustrated with the service providers that he worked out how to do it himself. From 15 September 1999 the company name and purpose changed to what it is today: Juizi CC, a provider of web hosting and software.
In that same year (1999), in another part of the world, the open source digital content management system Plone was born.
Plone by Juizi
Johan came across Plone and started using it to build websites. In 2004, he took a huge leap of faith, quit his day job and went full time with Juizi. The road was bumpy but fun. It really helped that the people in the Plone community were (and are) so great and that Plone itself was (and continues to be) such an excellent product.
As well as building Plone-based websites, Johan also developed a few apps (a timer, a data backup system, an online booking system, a live scoring system for sports events) - always with a focus on automation and getting things done in a better way. These mostly started out as building something to solve problems he encountered for which he couldn't find any existing solutions.
Today
Jumping forward to 2024: Juizi is going strong, with a core team and a couple of subcontractors. We have a varied portfolio of clients mainly from South Africa, and expanding to international clients as well, mainly in the non-profit sector. We are committed to building and maintaining websites worth having for our clients, and to Plone, with our team all active in the Plone community.
So that's it - the story of Juizi.
How did your company start?
Or maybe you have something new in mind, a startup or a side hussle, to solve a problem in your life for which there aren't currently any solutions? Here's a handy Business name generator from Shopify - fun to play around with if you need some options for your CIPC application.
Of course you'll need a domain and website (and maybe a shop?) for your new venture.
You know who to call.
