We met Jacksonville serial entrepreneur Damien Robinson, the founder of 1 Smart Tech, at OneSpark last week. If you’re an avid reader of nibletz.com the voice of startups everywhere else, you probably know how we feel about the startup vs small business debate.
I love entrepreneurship in any form but nibletz is about startups everywhere else, doing disruptive, innovative or challenging things, going against the grain. So when I hear about an IT company, or IT service provider, I instantly turn to the small business category. I’ve got a lot of great friends in the IT world that are small business owners. If we wrote about small businesses our pages would be filled with them.
Some of you may even remember how I called out this urban farm as a small business and not a startup at a weekend startup hackathon a few months later. In most cases I chalk IT companies up the same way I do rental property owners, as small businesses.
Now don’t get me wrong there is absolutely nothing wrong with small businesses. They too are the fabric of the new economy, creating jobs and helping people in their hometowns. They just aren’t startups. One thing I’m often found saying when I’m out speaking is that every startup founder is an entrepreneur but not every entrepreneur is a startup founder.
So now let’s talk about Damien. He’s on his second official company. His first company was a small business marketing, engagement and consulting company. Pretty much a small business. He was goot at what he did and has built a great network in Jacksonville based on those services. Now he’s looking to leverage what he gained from that small business to 1 Smart Tech, his latest endeavor.
1 Smart Tech is an online offline community, or collective, of curated “smart people” or tech specialists. Robinson is hoping to create a hybrid model of employment agency, IT outsourcing agency and on-off line community to constantly provide the best of the best tech services in Jacksonville and then eventually build scale.
Engineers, software engineers, developers, designers and other specialists that join up with 1 Smart Tech will be the best of the best. Robinson will have his network and be able to refer them out to businesses in need and help the network members find work with his curated group of clients, essentially pitting together the best of the best.
He hopes to disrupt traditional out-sourced technology companies by providing complete assesments and solutions and then scaling the concept outside of Jacksonville.
After all that am I 100% sold that 1 Smart Tech is a startup, nope. But I liked the guy, he’s sharp as a tack, and maybe he has just found the new model for out-sourced tech companies.
Find out more about 1smarttech here at Onesmarttech.com
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