When James Sullivan first broke into the startup sector, it was through an education technology company he attempted to launch in 2016.
He quickly stumbled — he outsourced his team overseas and built the wrong type of technology. It failed within the year and Sullivan, who had dropped out of college for the venture, returned to school to become a developer.
But soon, he was diving right back into the startup scene.
"While I was working as a developer, I realized everyone had the same problem — which is why they were hiring me," Sullivan said. "People want to come to someone who’s reliable, and I thought, 'If I can build out this team, I can help more startups.'"
He launched OneSeven Technology in 2017 from his home in New York City and began to build out the technology.
But when Covid-19 hit and Sullivan found himself trapped in his East Village apartment, he took a trip to visit friends in the Orlando and Tampa Bay areas — and didn't return to the Big Apple.
"I came to visit and said, 'Yeah I'm moving here,' and I never went back really," he said, adding the region's growing tech scene didn't play a role in his decision. "When I moved here I didn’t know it was starting to grow. I just put my head down and then popped up a year later and thought, 'Oh, there's a tech scene here.'"
He now spends his time between his St. Petersburg home and Miami as he grows his company. OneSeven is a product development studio of sorts that helps early-stage founders connect with developers, and web and app designers.
He focuses on companies in the pre-seed to Series A stage, which often can't afford to hire a fleet of developers.
"Hiring sprees, at that stage, can kill startups," Sullivan said. "We can be an extension of your team and fill the gaps you typically can’t fill — like DevOps, back-end stuff. We become an extension of the teams."
The developers offered by OneSeven can get onboarded in roughly one week, as opposed to months if they were full-time hires, Sullivan said. In addition to developers, he and his team offer leadership and mentor services.
"My whole mission is that a good startup shouldn’t fail due to bad software development," he said. He hopes to help others avoid the mistakes he made with his edtech company.
OneSeven has 15 employees, more than double its six full-time workers in 2021. He wants to keep both his team and clients relatively small, in order to assure quality.
"You can be lean and really help startups; when you're a 200-person shop overseas it's hard to care about companies," he said. "We talk to our founders every Friday. It's about working with less people, but adding as much value as possible."
The company is also entirely bootstrapped, and Sullivan doesn't plan to seek funding in the near future; instead, it is buoyed by revenue and profits.
As for whether his bet on Tampa Bay paid off?
"There are startup hubs; there are investments to grow the scene here," he said, pointing out innovation hubs Embarc Collective, the Tampa Bay Wave and ARK Innovation Center. "It's a great place to ask for help, find resources and have people pull for you. It's also small enough everyone knows what’s going on. In New York, no one wants you to succeed. Here, everyone seems to be cheering for you."
