Table of Contents
- Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
- How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
- Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
- What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
- What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
- Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
Brian Di Croce is the founder of Cloudgenda - Membership management platform that help administrators to make better business decisions.
Tell us about your product and what inspired you to start it?
Cloudgenda is a web-based platform that helps membership-driven organizations, such as yoga studios, martial arts clubs, and places of worship, to effectively manage the core of their businesses in a simple, proactive, and collaborative way.
I was inspired to create Cloudgenda after noticing a lack of automated and repeatable processes at my local judo club where for the past 50 years they've been managing their business by using pen and paper.
By using Cloudgenda, my local judo club not only focuses on offering an excellent product (judo) to its customers but is more eager to provide them with a delightful online experience in terms of registrations, invoicing, communication, and so much more. This new business mindset is what now separates them from the local competition who, though they’re offering the same product, doesn’t provide the same experience to its customers.
How long did it take you to acquire your first 50 customers, and what was your growth strategy?
At the moment of this writing (October 2022), Cloudgenda is in a private testing phase with my local judo club. With half a dozen of administrators and over 500 active members of all ages, that sole paying customer brings forth the right amount of data to incrementally build the application in a way that if it works for one of the most prestigious judo clubs in Canada, it should work for other organizations (not necessarily judo-related organizations, because Cloudgenda is agnostic to the business domain of the organization).
Cloudgenda being deployed on AWS App Runner, the cost of operation is minimal enough that the monthly subscription plan of just one customer is enough to cover it. That being said, besides making a predictable recurring monthly revenue through subscription plans, Cloudgenda also takes a small percentage fee from all electronic payments whenever an organization sends out invoices to its members.
Through words of mouth, other local and international martial art clubs have heard of Cloudgenda, and are eager to try it out, and I expect to publicly open its doors to every organization looking for a simple and effective membership management platform by the end of the year.
As an engineer, I don’t consider my marketing skills as developed or refined as they should probably be, so I’m focusing on organic growth through words of mouth, and by providing a stellar experience to my end users through excellent customer support, incremental features evolution, and attentive listening to feedback. I look forward to tackling the next chapter to making Cloudgenda grow even more that it is today.
Which technology stack are you using and what challenges and limitations does it pose?
Cloudgenda is primarily written in C# with .NET as both the framework and runtime environment for the application. Cloudgenda was initially started with .NET Core 3.1, but with the great work that Microsoft has been doing with each new release of its platform, the benefits of upgrading to the latest version of .NET every time is more than worth it because of the performance gains and lower costs of operations. For example, right now Cloudgenda is compiled to run on ARM64 processors and is deployed on AWS App Runner within a Linux container (Docker). The latest version of .NET enables this to happen, which in turns provide performance gains at minimized costs. However, one downfall of actively upgrading to the latest version of a platform is keeping up with its release documentation to better understand what changes (new or breaking) the new platform provides. That takes a lot of my time, but it helps me to make the best decision to know whether an upgrade is warranted and, if so, when to go ahead with that upgrade.
Besides using .NET to develop Cloudgenda and AWS as the operating environment for both staging and production environments, I also use Sonarcloud (cloud-hosted instance of Sonarqube) to constantly monitor the overall quality and technical debt for each code change. As a solo developer, it’s important that I keep an active eye on that because I want to make sure that no cracks appear on the foundation of the codebase as it evolves.
As for the frontend, I’m making use of JQuery and Syncfusion’s excellent UI components library. My software development experience is mostly on the backend, so I try to keep it simple on the frontend side of the application, even though I sometimes wonder if there’s a better way to accomplish something on the frontend than what I’ve implemented.
What are some of the most essential tools that you use for your business?
I use GitHub private repositories to manage code commits and track deployment branches. I’m also a big fan of Cloudflare (if I wasn’t working on Cloudgenda, I’d probably would’ve applied to work at Cloudflare), so I’m using their excellent Cloudflare Pages service to host the landing page of Cloudgenda (using Jekyll as the static site generator).
For business management, I mostly use Google Workspaces (Gmail, Meet, Drive, Docs, etc.) to handle communication with client and potential investors, and Jira Cloud to manage my backlog. Speaking of backlog, I’m also a fan of Canny to effectively manage customer feedback for the platform. In short, Canny allows me to publicly evolve Cloudgenda, and my clients love that because they can track for themselves whatever work is important to them and follow its status (planned, in progress, completed).
Finances being a core element of any business, I use QuickBooks Online to manage my bookkeeping. But more importantly, I have an excellent accountant that I appreciate her good work with all my heart, because this is not an aspect of the business that I want to handle personally.
What have been some of the biggest insights you've gained since starting your entrepreneurial journey?
“Start small, finish big.”
I’ve been working on Cloudgenda for the most part since 2020 and have learned so much from it as an engineer and business owner. For example, as an engineer, I learned that I just need to use “just enough technology” to quickly deploy value to my customers. Just make it work. That’s it; there’s no point in going much farther than that. Afterwards, as a feature is being more heavily used and can evolve to something else, that’s when I’ll spend more time to make it right. But first, I must simply make it work. Later, I make it right. And when the opportunity arises, I will try and make it fast (working on performance). This helps a lot to eliminate paralysis-analysis, which can deteriorate one’s drive to tackle a problem. As a business owner, I’ve learned to be more attentive and assertive when working and communicating with clients. If something they’re asking is not clear, I will take the time to properly understand not only what they’re saying, but trying to also understand the nuances (and maybe even what they’re NOT saying). I need to put myself in their shoes, and see whatever problem or need they have from their point of view. In short: listen first, understand second, and provide a solution third.
And lastly, don’t just focus on the money that a product generates for you. Money comes from doing a good work. Focusing on money is like waiting outside for a rainbow on a sunny day. Before a rainbow appears in the sky, the rain must fall. Therefore, focus on doing a good work. It’ll solidify your professionalism and your passion for care and quality, not only for your customers, but for yourself, your colleagues, and your investors.
Your recommended books/podcasts/newsletters etc.:
I enjoy taking time to read Hacker News (https://news.ycombinator.com) and catching up on the latest trends on InfoQ (https://infoq.com).
I’m also passionate about reading, so I’m always reading two books at the same time: a technical book that I keep in my office for whenever I’m taking a break from work, and a fiction or biographical book on my nightstand, so that I can immerse myself in another adventure or life before going to sleep. That being said, perhaps my most recommended book to friends, family members and colleague would be Dale Carnegie’s “How to Win Friends, and Influence People”. There are so many more that I’d recommend, but I consider this one to be a fundamental book that everyone should read at least once in their lives.
For podcasts, I’m a big fan of “The SaaS Podcast” hosted by Omer Khan because I get to learn from the experience of so many other successful founders. There's nothing new under the sun, but everyone is unique in a way that we can all learn something from everyone. I'm grateful that this podcast exists. I hope one day to speak with him about this passionate project of mine. But first, Cloudgenda must grow.
