The story behind Blax Software.
Founded in 2022 by Fabian Wagner. What follows is how the practice got here, what we believe, how we work day to day, and what happens after you pick up the phone. No deck, no agency-speak, just the actual story.
Who Blax Software is.
Founder & CEO
Fabian Wagner
Trained mechatronics engineer turned full-stack developer. High-functioning autistic founder who treats pattern-recognition and deep focus as working traits. Convinced that good software is built in the open, self-hosted on principle, and answerable to the community using it.
Founded
2022
Legal form
Einzelunternehmen (e.U.)
Brand
Blax Software
Operations
Gallneukirchen, Austria
Blax Software / mark
Black and gray.
Pragmatism, with a necktie at the centre.
Two tones, no accent colour. Black and gray stand for the way we make decisions: clear-cut, plainly stated, with no marketing palette to soften them. Either we know how to build something well, or we say so out loud.
The pictogram is an abstracted three-piece suit, jacket lapels arching outward, the waistcoat opening, and the necktie at the centre. The necktie is the heart of the mark: a quiet signal for the well-mannered, professional working culture this practice runs on. Tailored, considered, taken seriously.
A note on the name
Why Fabian Wagner?
Fabian Wagner is the chosen public name of the practice. It carries every outward-facing surface: the LinkedIn profile, keynote programmes, commit logs and code reviews, email signatures, and the conference badge when we meet you in person. One brand voice, used everywhere, so it is always the same shop on the other end.
It is not the legal birth name on the company registry; that one is Alexander Blasl. Fabian Wagner is a pseudonym, the kind Austrian civil law has long permitted without any registration step, the same convention that let Samuel Clemens write as Mark Twain or Eric Blair as George Orwell. Smaller stage, same arrangement: the chosen name carries the work, the registered name handles the paperwork.
Public brand
Fabian Wagner
Person behind
Alexander Blasl
How Fabian got here.
Five steps, hardware to software to founder. Click through to any of the institutions.
Software is one of the few fields a serious self-learner can master without a degree.
Documentation is free, source code is open, and every package registry is a public masterclass. The internet is a library that updates daily. Stack Overflow, GitHub, official docs, Discord servers full of practitioners: the curriculum builds itself if you have the patience to read it.
Most of what runs Blax Software was learnt that way. A computer-science degree is one path, useful for some careers; it is not the only path, and increasingly not the most current.
Fabian Wagner
Founder
Anyone can become a software developer, if they really burn for it. No certificate required, no permission needed, just patience, curiosity, and the willingness to keep reading until the pattern clicks.
Interests beyond the business life.
A short list of personal interests. None of them pay the bills, but most of them shape the work anyway.
Glider student pilot
Currently training as a soaring pilot.
Wakeboarding
Cable-park summers in Upper Austria.
League of Legends
On the keyboard for fun, not just for shipping.
Psychology & rhetoric
Hypnosis, NLP, rhetoric and a stretch in Toastmasters. The mind is one of the working tools most worth sharpening.
Precision sports
Long-time member of pistol and rifle clubs. Sport-shooting valued for its discipline of stillness, breath and precision, not the spectacle.
Vegan activism
A quiet conviction that a plant-based world would relieve a great deal of human disease, ease global food supply, and gift every individual living being a happier life.
What we believe about software.
Six beliefs that shape every quote, every commit and every contract.
01 / 06
Self-hosted by default
Our forge, our intranet, our project board, our tile server: all on our own racks. Customer data lives where we can answer for it, not on a third party's subpoena schedule.
02 / 06
Free and open source
Linux, Postgres, Nginx, the Composer and npm catalogues that built the modern web. We give back where we can, and we never ship a black box on top of someone else's shoulders.
03 / 06
Humane working process
No 70-hour sprints, no forced overtime, no panic releases. Predictable hours, real names, the same person on the call from kickoff to retirement.
04 / 06
Easy-going communication
Plain language, fewer slide decks, more shared screens. We answer the phone. We say "I do not know yet" when we do not know yet.
05 / 06
Quality first, scope second
A feature shipped poorly costs more than a feature shipped a week late. We choose right tools over familiar tools, and we name our trade-offs in writing.
06 / 06
Fairly priced, kulant by default
Quotes are line-itemised in plain language. If something is our fault, it does not end up on your invoice. Discounts that respect the customer are how a craftsman behaves.
The cadence of a Blax engagement.
Cadence beats heroics. Four small things that happen on a schedule, every project, every week, every milestone.
01 / 04
Working code at every milestone
Demos run on real code in a real browser. No PowerPoint-only check-ins, no mocked screens passing for progress, no "trust the deck" updates.
02 / 04
Estimates revisited weekly
Numbers get sharper as scope clarifies. We do not pretend a week-one estimate is gospel; we update it as reality teaches us, and we explain the move.
03 / 04
Phone answered, same-day replies
Calls go through during working hours, no ticket queue between you and the developer. Asynchronous messages get a reply inside the working day.
04 / 04
Trade-offs land in writing
Every meaningful decision lands in a written note: what we picked, what we did not, and why. The customer gets the reasoning, not just the outcome.
Curious how this cadence plays out from first email to launch? See the journey, step by step
Five postures behind every decision.
The engineering reflexes that decide what gets built, what gets pushed back on, and what gets explained.
01 / 05/ Featured
Reasoning out in the open
The full picture, always: what would not work and why, what is being done, what is already done. We would rather over-explain a decision than leave a customer guessing at one.
02 / 05
Rejected paths get named
When we choose option A, we tell you what B and C were and exactly why they did not fit. The reasoning travels with the conclusion, not behind it.
03 / 05
The "why-not" spelled out
When we push back on a customer idea, we explain the engineering reason it would hurt them, and we propose what we would build in its place.
04 / 05
We say "I do not know yet"
Confidence is earned. When something is still being figured out, we say so out loud and put it in writing. Faked certainty is more expensive than honest uncertainty, every time.
05 / 05
Reasoning travels with the code
Decision records, commit messages and inline comments carry the why alongside the what. The next maintainer, often us five years later, reads the same story we lived.
The next page of the story is yours to write.
A fresh idea, a rescue mission, a quiet retainer, a whitelabel build, or a phone call that turns into something larger. Whichever it is, the line is open.