Why I Started Eldritch IT

Growth is not the objective. Building something I am proud to stand behind is.

If you had asked me a few years ago whether I wanted to own an IT company, my answer probably would have been not really.

I wanted to become a better technician.

I liked fixing problems, learning new systems, and figuring out why something refused to work. The business idea came later, after I watched enough small technology problems become expensive ones because nobody had the time—or the ownership—to plan ahead.

The pattern I kept seeing

Small businesses do not usually struggle because they lack the newest hardware. More often, their technology has grown one purchase and one emergency at a time.

A router gets replaced because the old one dies. A switch gets added when the first one runs out of ports. Passwords end up in a notebook because there was never a proper place for them. Backups exist, but nobody has tested whether they can actually be restored.

Eventually the environment works, but nobody can explain why. More importantly, nobody wants to touch it because one innocent change might break something else.

That is not primarily a hardware problem. It is a planning, ownership, and documentation problem.

I started thinking about what an IT company would look like if it treated those less-visible parts of the job as the product instead of the paperwork that happens afterward.

Not the next Geek Squad

I do not want Eldritch IT to become a giant operation where customers only know the company as another ticket number.

My ideal version is intentionally small—roughly ten people total, not ten technicians beneath layers of management. I want a team I know and trust, serving a manageable group of clients well enough that our work speaks for itself.

The goal is not to be constantly visible. In the best case, a client’s systems are stable enough that they barely need to think about us. When they do need help, they should know exactly who they are calling and trust that the problem will be handled correctly.

That sounds less dramatic than rapid growth, but it is the kind of company I would want to hire.

Order from complexity

The phrase Order from Complexity became Eldritch IT’s tagline because it describes the job better than a list of services can.

A network should be easier to understand after we work on it. Important systems should be documented. Backups should be verifiable. Clients should know what they own, what they are paying for, and what will happen when something fails.

Technology can be complicated without being chaotic.

That distinction is the foundation of the company I am trying to build.

Starting before I felt ready

Eldritch IT existed in my head long before it existed on paper. There was always another reason to wait: another certification, another website revision, more experience, a better process, or a more complete plan.

Eventually I had to admit that waiting was not improving the business. It was only postponing the first real step.

I still do not feel as though everything is ready. I doubt I ever will. But there is now a registered Texas LLC, a public business site, internal tooling, documented services, and a growing body of work behind the name.

That is enough to keep moving.

Why Field Notes exists

This publication is part of the same philosophy. I want a record of the things I actually build, fix, break, and learn—not generic articles written to fill a schedule.

Some posts will cover the business itself. Others will cover my homelab, networking, self-hosting, software projects, and the technical problems that took longer to solve than they should have. I eventually gave that work its own home on eldritchit.me so the business site could stay focused.

If one of those posts saves someone else a few hours, it was worth writing.

Key takeaways

Stable systems depend as much on ownership and documentation as they do on hardware.
Eldritch IT is meant to stay small enough that clients know the people doing the work.
Starting with an incomplete but honest foundation creates more progress than waiting to feel fully ready.
Field Notes exists to show the work behind the company’s claims.

What I would do differently

I would stop treating confidence as a prerequisite.

More planning did help me clarify the services and values behind Eldritch IT, but some questions could only be answered by building the company in public. I would document those decisions earlier, publish the first useful version sooner, and let real feedback shape the next step.

AI transparency

AI assisted with organizing and editing this article. The company, experiences, opinions, and decisions described here are my own.