Franklin Funez does not fit the standard mold of a small-business software founder. He is not an MBA who decided that local commerce was an interesting market. He is a Computer Information Systems graduate who happened to spend several years inside a small business — and who, when he sat down to build for that market, brought a decade of technical practice with him.
Funez grew up in Columbus, Ohio, and went through Columbus City Schools. Two weeks after his 2018 high school graduation, he earned an Associate of Applied Science in Web Graphic Design from DeVry University — with honors. He immediately enrolled in a Bachelor of Science in Computer Information Systems at the same institution and completed the degree in two years and three months, graduating summa cum laude in October 2020.
While finishing the bachelor's, he was already in industry. In June 2020 he joined State Auto as a Desktop Support Technician, providing technical support to end users until November 2022.
The operational chapter began in March 2019, when Funez's brothers asked him to help run their painting business. The company started with negative seven thousand dollars — equipment financed on a credit card. Funez built the back-office systems that powered it: invoicing automation, scheduling workflows, customer-communication pipelines, and bespoke automations for builder partners (one such system allowed homeowners to self-schedule warranty appointments without any manual coordination). By 2023 the business was generating over $680,000 in annual revenue.
Between late 2022 and 2025, Funez relocated abroad to stand up a hollow-block manufacturing operation from the ground up. He negotiated directly with Chinese suppliers, imported machinery, equipment, and a truck, and navigated foreign construction law — while continuing to run the painting business's back-office remotely.
Throughout this period, Funez had been quietly investing in his own technical practice. A long-held instinct to build something of his own — paired with a deliberate run of programming courses and self-directed study starting in 2022 — was sharpening the skills that would eventually become the foundation of Honisto.
Engineer first. Operator by necessity. Founder by design.
He returned to the United States in 2025 with a clear intent — to finally execute on the vision he had been quietly sharpening for years. Winter slows the painting and roofing trades in Ohio to a crawl, and that off-season gave him the opening to commit fully.
Funez started building Honisto in December. The first version shipped that March. Three months. Seven-day weeks. Most days seventeen to eighteen hours at the keyboard. Two days off in the entire build.
Outside the work, Funez is a former amateur boxer, a Notre Dame football fan, and a follower of the FIFA World Cup. He is fluent in English and Spanish — relevant in both his international trade work and in serving a small-business market that has long been underserved in Spanish.