Every founder has that early idea — the one that made perfect sense at the time, seemed clever, well-structured, and valuable… until reality gently (or not-so-gently) reminded you that you’d misunderstood the real problem.

For me, that moment was my first attempt at what would eventually become SingleView.

Except back then, it wasn’t SingleView.
It wasn’t a platform.
It wasn’t an operating engine.
It wasn’t a unified view of anything.

It was a document management solution.

And while it wasn’t wrong, it wasn’t right either.

What I built solved the symptoms — not the system.
And that distinction changed the entire trajectory of my software philosophy.

The First Version: A Solution Looking at the Wrong Layer

In the beginning, the idea was simple:

• Organisations were drowning in documents.

• Information lived in email chains, spreadsheets, attachments, versions, and folders.

• Nothing was joined up.

• Nothing was visible across teams.

• Nothing lived in one place.

So I built something to fix that.

A structured, centralised document management tool.
Clean interfaces.
Good categorisation.
Permission controls.
A place where everything had a home.

It looked useful.
It felt useful.
Clients nodded and said, “Yes, this is what we need.”

Except… it wasn’t.

Because the real problem wasn’t documents.

It was information.

And the real value wasn’t a place to store files.

It was a way to move knowledge.

The Moment I Realised It Wasn’t Enough

The turning point came during a consulting engagement, when a senior leader asked a simple question:

“This is great… but where do I see what’s going on?”

I pointed to the document library.
They frowned.

Another colleague asked:
“Where does this connect to our operational systems?”

It didn’t.

Someone else asked:
“How do we use this to track actions?”

We couldn’t.

And that’s when it hit me.

I hadn’t built an operating platform.
I’d built a filing cabinet.

A nice filing cabinet.
A modern filing cabinet.
A digital filing cabinet.

But still a filing cabinet.

The information wasn’t connected.
The work wasn’t connected.
The processes weren’t connected.
The insight wasn’t connected.

I had solved organisation, not orchestration.

That realisation was painful — but necessary.

The Evolution: From Filing Cabinet to Information Highway

Once I saw the gap, I couldn’t unsee it.

Documents weren’t the heart of the organisation.
Data was.

Processes weren’t driven by files.
They were driven by decisions.

Information didn’t need a place to live.
It needed a way to flow.

That was the moment SingleView’s true identity began to form.

I shifted my thinking completely:

From:

“Where do we store documents?”

To:

“How do we connect every piece of information so people can make better decisions faster?”

From:

“Let’s build a repository.”

To:

“Let’s build an ecosystem.”

From:

“Give them access to documents.”

To:

“Give them a single version of truth.”

From:

“Organise the paperwork.”

To:

“Connect the organisation.”

That mindshift changed everything.

It birthed:

• A multi-module architecture

• Live data flows

• Unified operational views

• Real-time dashboards

• Linked processes instead of isolated tasks

• The concept of an “information highway”

• A platform that powers PMO, governance, exec reporting, facilities, IT, customer operations and more

The document management idea didn’t die.
It simply became one tiny part of a much bigger machine.

Why That “Failure” Was Essential

Looking back, the first version wasn’t really a failure — it was a prototype.

A reminder that:

1. Solving the visible problem isn’t the same as solving the real one

Documents were the symptom.
Disconnected information was the cause.

2. Clients describe what they feel — not what they need

People asked for better filing.
What they needed was better flow.

3. Software shouldn’t just store — it should enable

Enable insight.
Enable decisions.
Enable action.
Enable outcome.

4. Great platforms often start as small ideas that weren’t quite right

You build.
You learn.
You rebuild.
You evolve.

5. The most valuable systems connect what was already there

Not replace it.
Not duplicate it.
Connect it.

That first attempt laid the foundations for the philosophy I still follow today:

Software should reduce friction, connect information, and give leaders clarity — not complexity.

Looking Back

The first version of SingleView wasn’t the platform it needed to be.
But without building it, I would never have discovered the insight that shaped everything that followed.

It taught me to think beyond storage.
Beyond documents.
Beyond visibility.
Beyond forms and folders.

It taught me to think in highways, not cupboards.
In flows, not files.
In systems, not screens.

Today, SingleView is the product I wish I had understood how to build back then.

And it only exists because the early attempt wasn’t good enough.

Sometimes the best ideas are born in the moment you realise your first one wasn’t big enough.