THE STORY BEHIND BYTREK
Our story starts with our founder’s story.
Bytrek, like many bootstrapped companies, began as a founder’s vision and has grown into a family business built around legacy.
Jason’s dad became a programmer in the early 1980s. After receiving his computer science education, he entered in the aerospace industry programming in Z80 assembly language. He kept a 20+ year career as a programmer in numerous languages. At home he bought a TI-99 in the early 1980s, when Jason was still a young boy. In Bytrek’s home office today, there’s a framed receipt for that first home computer — a small reminder of how early this journey started.
Jason taught himself to code using BYTE magazine and even recreated ELIZA, one of the earliest examples of AI. Growing up in the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program, he had unusual access to computers for that time and often helped teachers enter test scores into early database programs. By the mid-1980s, he’d saved enough from birthdays and holidays to buy his own Commodore 64.
Despite this early love of technology, Jason didn’t begin his career in software. After graduating from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1997 near the height of the internet boom, he went into operations and management. Over the next 20 years he helped run and grow companies in the nutritional supplement, print, and cosmetic industries. In every role, he found himself building custom software — using rapid application development tools like Microsoft Access — to streamline processes and improve efficiency.
One of those internal applications proved so effective that the company chose to invest in rebuilding it in a modern programming language rather than buying a mass-market alternative. Jason, as the original architect, stayed on as a consultant to help guide the new version.
When that application launched, it became clear that it was easier for Jason to learn the new technology stack than it was to teach another developer the full depth of the business domain. He stepped fully into the developer role, bringing his operations background and passion for well-run businesses into the heart of the software.
As demand for his work grew, Jason began training his oldest child to code and started taking on new clients. Eventually, both he and his eldest went full time into software development for the companies they supported. The client base continued to grow, and so did the team. Jason focused on teaching each new team member not just how to write code, but how to understand the client’s world — how factories run, how shops schedule, how real people rely on these systems every day. As the company expanded, his middle child’s fiancé joined to help manage the growing business.
From Jason’s father, to Jason, to his children, Bytrek is the continuation of a family story in technology — a legacy of building tools that help real businesses run better. Today, that same spirit guides how we partner with our clients: long-term relationships, thoughtful solutions, and software we’d be proud to hand down to the next generation.