From Tennessee to Amsterdam: The Journey to Junovy

I've been putting off writing this post. Not because I don't want to share; I do. But when you sit down to explain how a queer, non-binary kid from small-town Tennessee ended up building a small independent European cloud hosting company from Amsterdam, it's hard to know where to start.

So I'll start with the truth: I built Junovy because I needed it to exist; especially in the current political climate around the world. And I think other people need it to exist too.

🏠 Where I came from

I grew up in a small town in Tennessee, in a very conservative, evangelical household. The kind of place where everyone knows everyone, church is the centre of community life, and there's a very narrow definition of who you're supposed to be.

I always knew I was different. I didn't have the language for it back then, but I knew there was a part of me that didn't fit the mould I was being pressed into. For a while, I tried to push those feelings down. I thought maybe if I just tried hard enough, they'd go away.

They didn't.

I came out as gay to my best friend when I was fifteen. It was terrifying. Eventually my parents found out too, and when I turned eighteen, they made it clear there wasn't room for a gay kid in their house. I was out the door with $124 in my bank account.

I moved to a small town near Tulsa, Oklahoma, where my online boyfriend at the time lived. It was that or homelessness. Oklahoma wasn't exactly a progressive paradise either, but it was a roof and a start. I got to work building a life there and eventually discovering computer programming.

✈️ The leap to Europe

I spent years building a career in software engineering, always with this restless feeling that I needed to get somewhere bigger, somewhere more accepting. I had my sights set on California; that was the dream for a queer tech worker from the South.

Then I met a pair of Dutch programmers who were freelancing at the company I worked for. When I told them I was thinking about moving to California, they said something that changed my life: "Have you ever thought about working in Europe?"

They sent me two job openings in The Netherlands. I applied to them both, but one of them was willing to take a chance on hiring and sponsoring an American. I've lived here ever since, and I'm now a Dutch citizen. The Netherlands gave me something I'd never really had before: the feeling of being safe. I could just be myself without the constant fear of being gay bashed on the street for looking or acting different, or for holding my husbands hand when we walk outside together.

🌈 Finding the Faeries

Several years into my life in The Netherlands, I discovered the Radical Faeries; specifically the Riverland Faeries, the Dutch branch of an international queer community. The Faeries are hard to describe if you haven't experienced them. They're part spiritual community, part intentional gathering, part joyful chaos. There's a deep emphasis on connection, authenticity, and creating spaces where queer people can show up fully as themselves.

I got involved, and it stuck. I now serve as treasurer and board member of The Radical Faeries of Europe (RFE), which is a registered Dutch non-profit association. The Faeries became a second family, and through that work, I started seeing first-hand how much queer communities struggle with digital infrastructure.

💡 Why Junovy exists

The RFE needed collaboration tools. They needed somewhere to share files, have video calls, coordinate gatherings across multiple countries. And every option on the table was either owned by a US tech giant with questionable data practices, prohibitively expensive, or required a PhD in systems administration to self-host.

I'd been working for startups for years and the work had stopped feeling meaningful. I was good at it, but I'd go home at the end of the day and think: who is this actually helping? It had always been my dream to work completely for myself and build my own thing. But "someday" has a way of never arriving, doesn't it?

Last year, I quit my 9-to-5. And I thought: if I don't do this now, I'll probably never do it.

I had the skills working in tech for 17 years, and building secure, scalable and robust platforms and web applications from scratch. It was now time to apply those skills to building a digital platform for a community that I'm passionate about rather than companies who only care about making a profit. Junovy was born in June 2025, and I haven't looked back.

🔒 What Junovy is really about

At its core, Junovy is a European cloud hosting platform. We run Nextcloud, NextCloud Talk, Collabora, Rocket.Chat, and a growing suite of tools on open-source software hosted on European infrastructure. Customer data stays in the EU, protected by GDPR, never sold, never compromised.

But Junovy is more than infrastructure. It's a statement about what queer-owned technology can look like.

I'm building a platform where queer people, non-binary people, activists, community organisers, small businesses run by people who've been pushed to the margins; all of them can have a digital home that actually respects them. A place where your data is encrypted, your privacy is the default, and nobody's making money by selling your behaviour to advertisers.

I want people to be able to express themselves, organise themselves, and run their communities in the digital realm without sacrificing their privacy or security. That shouldn't be a luxury; it should be the baseline.

✊ NOTAFLOF

If you've spent any time in Faerie or queer community spaces, you'll know the concept of NOTAFLOF: No One Turned Away For Lack Of Funds. It's the idea that access to community shouldn't depend on how much money you have.

I carry that principle into Junovy. If you're a Faerie, or part of a queer community, and you need hosting but can't afford the base plans; reach out. Send an email to hello@junovy.com and we'll work something out. No forms, no means testing, no hoops. Just a conversation.

🌱 What's ahead

Junovy is still young. I'm one person (with a lot of help from open-source communities and some very patient friends and husband) building something that I want to last. The roadmap is ambitious: more tools, better integrations, AI features that respect data sovereignty, and eventually a platform that can serve not just Faeries but any small business or community that values privacy and independence.

I don't know exactly where this goes. But I know that the kid who got kicked out with $124 would be pretty amazed to see where things ended up. And I think they'd be glad I finally stopped waiting for "someday."

If any of this resonates with you, if you're looking for hosting that reflects your values, or if you just want to say hi; you can find me at junovy.com or drop me a line at hello@junovy.com.

Thanks for reading. 🌸

Big Hugs,
Bobby aka Omni

Junovy provides European cloud hosting and business software for small businesses and communities. Queer-owned, non-binary owned, Faerie-owned; and built on open-source foundations with privacy at the core. Learn more at junovy.com.