This domain has been registered to me since the November 1998. I was in college and starting my consulting company. I did a combination of web design, Perl/CGI development, and custom server building. Specifically, building servers that could run FreeBSD or Linux. This business became very successful and ultimately paid for my entire college education, housing, car, etc.,. In 2000 (my peak), I did over $300,000 in sales, with a profit margin between 15-20 percent. Very early versions of the Essenz website looked like this:
When I graduated in 2002, selling servers wasn't that lucrative. Vendors like Dell, Compaq, etc.,. were catching on, and becoming more supported for open-source operating systems. Margins were getting smaller. So I took a day job. Essenz continued to build and sell servers through around 2004-2005.
I shape shifted again. I had experience doing web design, software development, and systems engineering. I also had experience building servers. From my day job, I was getting more involved in the behind the scenes network engineering of an ISP. So I shifted my entrepreneurial endeavors towards hosted services, specically, web and email hosting. From 2005 to 2006 I built a nice base of web and email hosting clients, all running on my own hardware in colocation cabinet at an ISP I worked for. During this time, I created a new domain name to advertise my hosted services under, initially I used the domain NEUNIX.net, but had to change to QUONIX.net after the Open Group got angry with me because NEUNIX encapsulated the word UNIX which they had a trademark on. Essenz.com still existed, and was my official company name for tax purposes.
One day, a web hosting client of mine asked if I would host his entire physical server. I said yes. I had a 1/2 cabinet and plenty of space. At this point I realized datacenter colocation was more profitable, eaiser to acquire clients, and had higher margins. From 2006 to 2007, I acquired more and more "colo" clients, eventaully having 4 whole rack cabinets of gear and running my own IP space and ASN.
From struggle comes growth. I was purchasing wholesale colocation space from my employer, but in the summer of 2007 I got laid off. Now at this point my colocation business was a nice chunk of money on the side, I was bringing in around $5000/month. I had dreams of building my own datacenter, so I did some research and found a carrier hotel where I could lease 2000sqft and build my own space. Capex aside, this build would run me $9000/month in minimal MRC (BGP uplinks, rent, power, etc.,.). I figured why not? Lets do it! I'd give myself 6 months to grow and get my revenue above $9000 to break even. If I didn't, I'd go under and walk away from the lease. I was only 27, if I failed, I'd bounce back.
Luckily, within about 5 months my revenue grew to under $10,000/month and I was out of the red. From 2007 to 2012 I grew from 6 rack cabinets billing at $10,000/month to 55 cabinets billing at $78,000/month. Quonix was officially a major datacenter colocation provider in Philadelphia, PA. At the end of 2012 I sold the business for low 7 figures. I continued to consult for new owners from 2012 to 2019. Had a child in between, and in 2019 I returned to a regular day job at DuckDuckGo.
This entire time, Essenz never went away. I kept it as a shell company doing consulting from time to time. it has also always been my personal email. Right now the site doesn't really serve any purpose, so if you arrived hear, you have this story to read.