Not even two years in and a Raleigh cloud technology startup has $20 million in revenue and a new equity partner.
Aligned Technology Group founder John Zemonek said he had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, “playing around” with a couple of business ideas over the years, such as Boat Builders Trading Company, a sportsfishing apparel startup he launched in 2018.
But with Aligned, he was “all in.”
“When we started this thing, it was taking the leap,” he said.
Starting the company in 2021 was a risk. A pandemic was raging in the background and Zemonek had a young family, including three small children. He already had a successful career as a senior manager for intelligent cloud and infrastructure at Accenture.
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But he also has a supportive wife in Jessica Zemonek – now his CFO – a CPA who helped him run the books as he was starting out and backed his ambition.
“For me, I just believed in what we were doing and the direction we were going,” Zemonek said.
So he quit Accenture.
The early days weren't glamorous, operating from a tiny conference room within another company in Raleigh. But customers started buying in.
After seven months, the firm hired its first employee, soon moving into its current home in the Village District. Today, Aligned sits at nine employees and about $20 million in revenue, Zemonek says, thanks to big contracts.
Aligned has a very specific wheelhouse, which helps it differentiate, he says. It helps organizations migrate, adopt and operationalize cloud services and specializes in Amazon Web Services (Nasdaq: AMZN).
The company is ready for the next step – growth. So Zemonek, a Cary native, teamed up with an old friend to help beef up the firm's sales efforts. He's known Chris Clarke since middle school. They were college roommates at North Carolina State University. And, as disclosed in a securities filing, Clarke recently funneled in $321,000 for an equity stake, becoming a partner in the firm.
Both Zemonek and Clark, formerly of TierPoint, are co-managing directors with the cash infusion, Zemonek said, adding that Clarke’s sales background will give the startup a boost – and that he’s excited at the trajectory it’s on.
But it’s still a big risk. According to CB Insights, about 90 percent of new businesses ultimately fail – most due to running out of money.
In North Carolina, however, the odds aren’t stopping people like Zemonek from taking the plunge. According to the North Carolina Secretary of State’s Business Registration Division, 171,400 new businesses were started in 2022. Already in 2023, nearly 16,000 businesses were launched in January.