The building blocks continue to stack: Yet another startup has spun out of a larger Tampa Bay technology company, but the most recent example has already secured a name for itself in the high-demand Salesforce world.
CloudFirst Labs was created by three former Vology employees after the encouragement from then-CEO Barry Shevlin. Vology is a Clearwater-based managed information technology services and cloud provider.
John Dionne, president and co-founder of CloudFirst Labs, was initially working on the internal development team helping Vology implement Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) software. But the ideas continued to spin in his head and Shevlin gave the push for Dionne, along with employees Robert Jones and Wes Tavares, the go-ahead to pursue a new full-time business.
"[Shevlin] and I chatted a lot about if we could turn the development team to a profit center and it was very hard to do within the confines of Vology and the size of the company," Dionne said. "He asked me what I thought and I said that it would be really cool if we started a company."
The company was launched in 2018 and is a consulting partner with Salesforce, also offering three applications for any company that has the Salesforce software. Vology was counted as CloudFirst Labs' first customer. The applications include helping companies calculate commission in a seamless manner, along with a separate application to help with a quoting tool for Salesforce.
"2020 was challenging to us but we made it through and we're hoping now companies and industries that had to deal with Covid and working from home have recalculated budgets for 2021 and 2022," Dionne said. "We're very bullish on the coming years."
The three co-founders remain CloudFirst Labs' only employees and own the entire company, remaining completely bootstrapped. While Dionne hopes to increase the number of employees by next year, he is a bit more wary of potential funding.
"We would like to remain 100 percent employee owned, but if it was the right deal and someone wanted to join our team — we're always open to new ideas," he said. "It doesn't cost or hurt to listen to new ideas. But we don't really need to raise capital; the products are there and we’re bullish on our services business this year, to fuel the marketing activity we want to do."
CloudFirst Labs is the latest example in a growing number of tech titans in the community looking to further build the startup ecosystem. Co-founder of ConnectWise Arnie Bellini and myMatrixx founder Steve MacDonald both started their own investment firms specifically aimed at growing tech startups, while other companies like startup giant Peerfit have had its own spinoffs in recent months.
But Shevlin, who now runs Cavu Capital, states the decision was less about the bigger picture, and more about helping a longtime friend.
"It just seemed like that the right thing to do," Shevlin said. "[Growing the startup ecosystem], that's an aside. It was what was best for them; it was more personal for them."
