In Conversation with Mark Rekveld, Marvelution B.V. Founder: ‘Never Did I Think a Hobby to Learn More about Software Development would Grow into a Company’

“I want to continue listening to feature requests from customers and improving the apps and services provided.”

Marvelution B.V. is a software development company. It develops software to optimize the software development processes, particularly with a focus on the development of add-ons for Atlassian products.

The company grew out of open-source projects. In 2008, Mark Rekveld, founder, open-sourced his projects under the umbrella project Marvelution. With its open-source subprojects, this project quickly grew and became the foundation for Marvelution, the company.

Formally, Marvelution was established in 2015 and is currently based in Assendelft, The Netherlands.

Mark Rekveld, Marvelution B.V. Founder, spoke exclusively to The Silicon Review. Below is an excerpt.

Q. What are the critical issues addressed by your solutions?

The Jenkins Integration for Jira app provides insight into issues and their relationship with builds in Jenkins. Allowing you to answer questions such as; are the builds for issue X passing now? Are all the build green for issues in version Y? Can I release version X? The Jenkins Integration for Jira app allows Jira users, developers, release managers, QA engineers and alike, to quickly and easily see the build status of any issue they are interested in and make informed decisions based on that.

Q. With tens and hundreds of software development support services providers in the market, business owners have many options to choose the best from. What makes you the best software development catalyst?

The Jenkins Integration for Jira app has been around since 2008, and it has seen three complete rewrites to overcome issues that were not fixable in the original version of the app. Marvelution has had the time to fail and fail again until the stable solution was available to use. During this process, customers were helping out to fix bugs, propose solutions to issues, etc. This is something current service providers can’t afford, given how time scarcity stalls projects and that customers do not participate anymore. Indeed, customers now want to get a working solution right after installing it. This makes it harder to develop successful solutions, sans customer participation.

Q. If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting as an entrepreneur, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid to fail. Perfection is something no one will ever have since the software is built by humans, which by nature are not perfect. Bugs will be found, and users will always find a way to issues whatever you built. These failures are what will help you to learn. Learn to code better; learn to listen to customers, learn to find newer, better solutions. Without falling, you never learn to get up. Therefore, go forth and have fun developing whatever you want to develop and see every failure as an opportunity to learn and grow, and one day you will be far more successful than you thought possible.

Q. What do you think is the most memorable moment in your career?

The most memorable moment in my career is when I formally launched Marvelution in 2015. Never did I think a hobby to learn more about software development would grow into a company.

Q. If not a business leader, what else you wish to be?

If not a business leader, then I would be a business innovator. Never standing still; always looking for ways to improve products, services, and own development flows.

Q. What does the future hold for Marvelution and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

This year will see the second product Jenkins Integration Automation for the Jira app, come out of beta ready for production use. Next to this, Atlassian has decided to discontinue its server products, which will impact Marvelution and its customers. Therefore, 2021 will be a year where plans will be formed to handle this change best and what is needed to continue supporting customers running the Jira Server edition.

Besides, I want to continue listening to feature requests from customers and improving the apps and services provided.

The Leader at the Helm of Marvelution B.V.

Mark Rekveld is the Founder of Marvelution. After finishing his bachelor’s degree in Informatics, Mark focused on Java software development. During his career, he developed a real passion for lean development and open-source software. So much so that he started sharing his hobby projects as open-source software, which founded the way for Marvelution B.V.

Next to his love for open-source development, Mark is also a big Google, Android, and Atlassian fanatic.

He has always had, and still has, an appetite to grow in knowledge and skills related to software development—the process of development, the development style, and solution architecture. Founding the company allowed Mark to share his knowledge with a bigger audience that he cherishes.

“The open-source projects developed as part of the Marvelution project are considered the foundation that allowed Marvelution to start. Because of this, the company has adopted these projects and will continue to support and develop them.”