10 Years of Connecting People!

When you’re the founder of a company like Cloverhound, you live and breathe your business. It’s a test of your dedication and your ability to find balance as you invest your time, money and support from family and friends to the point where it’s hard to make a clear distinction where one ends and the other begins. From the people who helped us get on our feet (thanks, Mom!) to the culture we work to create, the distinction is blurred because Cloverhound truly has become a family. 

After my wife and kids, Cloverhound has been the center of my life for the last decade: quarter of my 40-year-old life, which sounds unbelievable just saying it. Some perspective: when we started this company in April of 2014, the number one song in the U.S. was Happy by Pharrell Williams, Vine was still an app and TikTok hadn’t been released yet, and you could only buy two kinds of cars from Tesla. Charlotte’s NBA basketball team was still playing as the Bobcats, and Cisco was making its first investments in IoT startups. 

Two of the three most important people in my life – my daughters Penelope and Norah – hadn’t even been born yet.

Looking back, it’s hard to believe how all this came together. To understand the origins of Cloverhound, you need to know I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur. When most kids in high school were dreaming about being a professional athlete, or positioning themselves for prom, my friends and I were trying to figure out what we needed to learn to start a business.

My first job in technology after getting my CCNA certification was in 2005 with Pomeroy IT Solutions here in Charlotte. I was supposed to be a wireless technician, but somehow ended up doing VoIP projects instead. For the next 10 years I worked as a Unified Communications and Contact Center engineer for various VARs but I always had a business venture on the side I was working on. The most recent prior to Cloverhound was MindsMesh, a social learning and studying platform for LMS systems. We raised an angel round, had 4 major universities paying for the platform, had revenue and a few employees. 

While we were working to get MindsMesh off the ground, my main client, through a series of luck, timing and contractual changes, gave me an opportunity to leave my previous employer and found Cloverhound. My wife, Kat, had always pushed me to start a business focused on my day job, rather than trying to hit a homerun with some random idea. 

After some soul searching, Kat convinced me to go all in. It sounds easy in practice, but just the insurance required by the client was $25,000 for a year. That meant our entire savings and our house would be gone if this didn’t work. “We can always get another house,” I remember my wife telling me. I shut down MindsMesh, returned the money to our investors, and Cloverhound was born as a self-financed startup – an ethos that continues to this day.

If you had asked me back then if Cloverhound would be where it was today, I wouldn’t have believed you. Here are some stats about where the company stands today:

  • 70 employees between the United States and Latin America.
  • Approximately $10,000,000 in global revenue projected for 2024.
  • No investors, 100% organic growth.
  • Profitable every single year since founding.
  • Multiple SaaS products generating more than $1,000,000 in ARR.
  • Delivering solutions for 40 partners under MSA.
  • The best team ever built for delivering CC and UC solutions for our partners.

Successful leaders surround themselves with the types of people they want to be, and that’s exactly what Cloverhound is to me. I’ve learned that people better than yourself, who you can learn from, is the first key to running a successful business. I’m proud to work with people who inspire me to be better every day. 

The quality of the people I work with gives me the confidence to say we are just getting started. Ten years in and the atmosphere at Cloverhound feels as good as – if not better – than it did when I founded the company. The business is in its heaviest development cycle to date as we work to bring innovative new products to market this year.

I’d be remiss to not end with a few shoutouts: people inside and outside Cloverhound that have really affected the trajectory of our company and been long-term supporters of us. First, without Jose and Alonso Bogarin, we wouldn’t be the global company we are today. 

Second, special thanks to Andy Dignan, Kevin Parrett, Andrew Teshima, Ed Umansky, Angelica Srivoraphan, Austin Lutz, my wife and all the spouses of our employees for always sticking with us. You took huge risks when we were starting the company to help us be successful. Many of you left lucrative, secure jobs to be some of our first employees and some of you are still with us today. I’m forever grateful. 

Third, to our partners, our customers, friends of Cloverhound, and all our employees past and present: Thank you! We are nothing without you.

Finally, to the two people who will probably never read this – Penelope and Norah – everything I do is to help build a future for you. I can only imagine what Cloverhound will look like when you’re in high school – dreaming of being an athlete, getting ready for prom, or maybe thinking about starting a business of your own just like Dad.

-Chad