/about
sometimes (just) he, always we
In every case sijjio is at least one person: Mike Faulhaber. sijjio is a “we” because it can (and has) become a multidisciplinary product team comprised of contracters and freelancers from all over the world.
sijjio advocates building product teams as described by Marty Cagan and colleagues.
some history
a spin-off
Before there was sijjio (pronounced C'-G.O.), there was motorfocus. motorfocus got its start in 2007 when its founder and principal, Mike Faulhaber, chose to leave his employer in NYC and relocate to Chicago for family reasons.
The very day that the motorfocus business was officially formed, an entrepreneur with whom Mike had worked during the previous two years in NYC became its first client. motorfocus then continued for the next eight years as a distributed product team to launch and manage a groundbreaking CRM for the retail automotive industry.
Since its founding, various incarnations of what’s become sijjio have provided product management and product development consulting services to teams devoted to understanding (often unarticulated) problems and their (often related) opportunities.
Although sijjio is an American company (though soon to be an international one, too), its principal is most often in Europe - again for family reasons. However, clients, partners, and team members - like opportunity - can be anywhere.
more than remotely experienced
For much of the time since its founding in 2007, motorfocus/sijjio has worked remotely.
It began purely for practical reasons: despite being located in major metropolitan areas, there was a shocking scarcity of suitable local product developers and product designers. Though the early teams were only partially remote, the need to quickly learn how to work together led us to push the limits of the early versions of tools from 37signals/Basecamp, Google, and Trello.
As remote teams have become the norm, this substantial experience with working remotely is a significant advantage.
why ‘motorfocus’? why ‘sijjio’?
The original idea for motorfocus was to bring professional media production to amateur motorsports. Motorsports + photography ~= motorfocus. Years later, that idea evolved into creating a publishing outlet for aspiring automotive journalists - mere months before numerous blogs began their inevitable dominance. In late 2007, the motorfocus name adorned this product consultancy until, in 2021, it became part of the sijjio portfolio.
sijjio (pronounced C'-G.O.) is a word-ified version of the acronym CGO (Creating Great Outcomes). That sounds vaguely Italian is a happy coincidence.