Most people like to get away from work when they take a career break.

But during his one-year sabbatical, technology wizard Michael Branco decided to set up his own business called Fireminds Ltd. while travelling around Europe and South America.

The budding Bermudian entrepreneur found himself working remotely on a laptop from his girlfriend's apartment in Sofia, Bulgaria one minute, to walking the Inca Trail and white water rafting in South America the next and even making time to start an Executive MBA course at the prestigious Richard Ivey Business School in Toronto.

Mr. Branco quit his job as vice-president of software architecture at QuoVadis and moved to Europe, where he travelled with his girlfriend Polina more than 14,000 kilometres by car, plane and train, spending most of his time in Eastern Europe immersing himself in new cultures.

During his time in Europe, he worked for several clients remotely via a high-speed Internet connection using two laptops to access files and email from servers in Texas, USA, and started building up a new company, recruiting talent, partner companies, anchor customers and drawing up strategies.

"Wherever I am in the world, I can access them," said Mr. Branco.

"I sat in the apartment in Sofia with the laptops and went online and used the Voice Over IP to do conference calls along with the Virtual Private Network to securely access the system.

"That is the way we can do things these days."

Mr. Branco returned to Bermuda for two months in November 2008 and worked on-site for several clients, while building up to new business.

In January he left again, this time for South America with Polina, backpacking around Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay; camping in the Amazon, completing the four-day hike through the Andes on the Inca Trail, white water rafting in level four rapids and enjoying the Iguazu Falls.

By his own admission, the time Mr. Branco spent in South America took him well outside his comfort zone, but the hike through the Andes (up to 4,200 metres at Dead Woman's Pass) was inspiring.

"It gave me time to reflect about my life and also much of the time I was coming up with ideas and strategies for my new company," he said.

"There is something to be said for being cut off from the world and having quality time to think and reflect."

After South America, Mr. Branco traded in the warm weather and his backpack for a cold Toronto winter and a briefcase as he attended his first residence session for his Executive MBA at the Richard Ivey Business School.

But he found himself in his element, sharing the classroom with a group of seasoned business veterans, some of which are CEOs of major companies in Canada, and learning and experiencing a lot from the impressive faculty and the peers in his class.

Now Mr. Branco is back on the Island, he has been busy working for his existing client base, in addition to recruiting more local staff and looking for office space.

And he reckons there will be a great opportunity to build a technology solutions company in these tough economic times, while being cautious of expanding too quickly and becoming a victim of the recession.

"Being the small guy with some big company experience, I do not have all the overheads, such as a big building to rent and lots of consultants to pay," he said.

"We seem to be winning the medium-sized projects right now because we prove to be competitive and clients are trying to reduce their costs.

"My theory is that if you start a company when the economy is low, when the economy rises again, you rise with it.

"We are looking around for office space now and there is a lot of it, things are a little bit less expensive in this current economic climate and with lay-offs there is more talent available in the market - I did not plan it this way - it is just great timing to get access to some of this talent and office space."

Fireminds was originally started and incorporated as a Bermuda company in 2001 by Mr. Branco and has been a platform for his freelance work in software and website development over the past eight years and he plans to officially launch it next month.

With an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from University of Western Ontario, graduate studies in databases from Stanford University and plans to finish his MBA in July 2010, it seems that he has the world at his feet, having built an impressive career during the past 10 years, using his foundation in software development to learn many areas of IT.

Equally at home in the server room as the board room, Mr. Branco started as a software developer for Ernst & Young Bermuda and then moved on to be senior enterprise architect for Promisant Ltd, an E-commerce payment gateway, followed by a stint at QuoVadis, working in online security, disaster recovery, VMware, data centre and infrastructure design and IT audit compliance.

Fireminds will focus on offering software, website and sharepoint development, disaster recovery, VMware and infrastructure, E-commerce and payment processing, IT Services, hosting and management and computer security services.

Meanwhile Mr. Branco has already hired two full-time software developers to help with his current workload and is looking to hire more consultants in Bermuda, eventually expanding the company to eight staff by the end of the year.

As Fireminds grows, he plans to offer more managed services and wants to continue building on his reputation of providing solid technology solutions for his clients.

"I have always been fairly independent within the organisations I used to work in," Mr. Branco said.

"I am a self-starter and motivator, so for me not much has changed - now I am accountable to the customer rather than the boss, which I enjoy more.

"While Fireminds officially launches in April 2009, we already have an impressive book of business in all our service areas, with clients from Government, insurance, banking and other businesses in Bermuda.

"A lot of people didn't realise I am now back in Bermuda and settled here again, once the word got out the phone started ringing and we are happy to be landing more and more projects.

"I have been lucky I have had a good career so far and experience and now I want to bring it all to bear with Fireminds."

In his spare time, Mr. Branco also volunteers to give something back to Bermuda and wants to help build a better future for the Island, serving on the executive committee for the Ross Blackie Talbot Charity, on the E-commerce Advisory Board and the Ewan Sampson Scholarship Trust.

Anyone interested in finding out more about Fireminds can contact Mr. Branco at 295-0000, email mbranco@fireminds.com or visit the website at www.fireminds.com