After five years as the sole developer and infrastructure engineer for the Major Extremity Trauma Research Consortium at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, I was laid off due to cuts in federal funding—the sixth time in my 31-year software development career.
While searching for a new position, I launched a small IT services company initially called Dogwood Tech Help (later Carolina Tech Experts). My focus wasn’t on building a business empire—it was simply helping everyday people with their technical problems. I had modest success in Raleigh, NC, but when I moved back to my hometown of Thomasville, work really picked up. Soon I wasn’t just troubleshooting computers, but also TVs, streaming devices, and smart home equipment. I always told customers that if they needed help again, we could start a remote session to save us both time and money.
There was just one problem: remote support required me to know what they had and how everything was connected. I’d had at least three service calls where I drove out, plugged in a device, turned it on, and was done. Clearly, I needed a way to document each customer’s setup.
Given my extensive software engineering background, I figured building a simple database would be a cakewalk. But then a bigger idea emerged: What if I could visualize everything—draw a map of how it all connects? I had Microsoft Visio, but maintaining those diagrams as things changed felt like a chore. And what if I could hand customers documentation showing them how everything interconnected, with notes on what to do when something went wrong?
Surely something like this already existed. After researching, my answer was “yes and no.” Documentation tools existed, but they were built for enterprises—priced accordingly—and none offered the visualization I envisioned. So I decided to build my own.
Once I had a working prototype, I realized others might want this too—including homeowners who could benefit from documenting their own systems. I could license the software, or better yet, host it for them.
That’s when everything started coming together. It just needed a name. I liked the concept of a “runbook”—an engineering term for standard operating procedures covering a system or interconnected systems. And this was for the home user. HomeRunbook. The domain and trademark were both available, and the “home run” association evokes exactly the right feeling: knocking it out of the park.
Early prototypes only supported networks and computer setups. When I showed it to my brother, a low-voltage technician, he pointed out it wouldn’t work for him—it didn’t support the equipment he installed. That was an easy fix: add those device types and connection options. From there, the vision expanded. Electrical systems. Plumbing. Any kind of network—any interconnection between things—could be documented with this tool.
So here we are. I’ve been constantly improving the system, adding features and refining the user experience. I may be biased, but I believe this is a genuinely powerful tool with nothing quite like it on the market today.
I hope you enjoy using it as much as I enjoyed building it!