Concepts in Action - Joe Alegre and Cloud Nine Solutions

         

Joe Alegre has over 15 years of experience in application development and IT management and is currently managing his own venture: Cloud Nine Solutions.  Through this company, he offers architecture, development, management, and delivery of custom solutions to businesses through multiple software.

      Before his Cloud Nine venture, he started and managed a web design company called Alegre Design, which ultimately failed in part to the tragedies of September 11, 2001.

      Currently, he and his business partner Tim Kelly are also working on a project called CarClips, a new app that makes it easier for people to buy and sell cars.  

     His main business and source of income, however, remains Cloud Nine Solutions.

            Cloud Nine was started because Joe recognized two shifts in his market: 1) Clients desire not to house, manage, and support their own servers and infrastructure for enterprise applications like Microsoft Dynamics CRM. These applications allow for businesses to quantify information, qualify information and generally operate more smoothly; and 2) Clients do not necessarily want to build these types of applications from scratch, but they would rather use out-of-the-box functionality of a tool like Microsoft Dynamics CRM then customize it to suit their business. Joe saw these two gaps in the market and he decided that he could provide the services to fill those gaps for businesses. This model was also advantageous for small business like his because Microsoft got into cloud based services so clients who did not have the infrastructure or desire to support servers in-house could now pay a monthly fee per user to access these same enterprise apps via the internet. Joe could now build a business based on this new technological development, and now his business has grown two-fold over the past two years.

            Joe has three basic pieces of advice for the budding entrepreneur:

   1.  Don’t be afraid to fail.

It’s cliché, but the honest truth is that you will fail.  It doesn’t mean you will lose your business, but every business goes through growing pains.  Learn from it and figure out how to keep moving forward.  

   2.  Figure out your weaknesses and surround yourself with people that fill those gaps.
      There are so many aspects to running a business. There is no way to do all of them efficiently.  Of course, you have to wear all of those hats from time to time but as my business continues to grow (we’ve doubled in size each of the last two years) then you can find resources to function within no more than one or two of those roles.

   3. Understand how to relate to clients. Listen 80% of the time, talk 20%.
      You must understand what a client needs and figure out how you can help. It seems simple, but it’s lost on many consulting and development groups. 
    

   Here are some links for more information about Joe Alegre and his ventures:
   Economic Development CRM
   Trend Magazine article 
   CarClips Beta Site