How did I create a software development company with people who didn't know how to program?

This is the story of how I came up, after working for four years as a software developer in Bogota, with the idea of quitting my well-paid job, taking all my savings and going back to my hometown to create a software development company from scratch with people who didn't know anything about programming.

My hometown

I was born in Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca, a town in Colombia that is located near La Dorada, Caldas and CACOM 1 (Colombian Air Force Base). With a population of around 25,000, there are very few sources of employment. There are no universities, it’s sunny all the time and temperatures can reach 30 to 40°C. It’s surrounded by several rivers, ponds and natural lakes, the internet is not fast and when it rains very hard, the light goes out. 

I graduated in 2006 from a public school, Policarpa Salavarrieta School. Thanks to the efforts of my parents and grandparents, I had the opportunity to study Systems Engineering at the Catholic University of Colombia in Bogotá, graduating as an engineer in 2011. 

The idea of creating a company

It all started in August 2014, I started working as CTO for a startup in Bogota, that was my fifth job. However, the idea of creating my own company had been around for a long time, in my free time or on the bus on my way home. The idea became something deeper, to the point that I felt the need to want to make it happen. So, after a while, even though I had a stable job and was earning very good money, I felt that I was missing something, that I wanted to do something more for my personal and professional life to feel good about myself.

In addition to my regular job, I sometimes worked on some freelance projects in my free time or on weekends. I had a client I had been working with for some time - Juan David, for whom I provided consulting and software development services. One day I met him at my apartment to work on a mobile application. At the end of the day, I thought of telling him about my idea.

"I have an idea hovering in my head for some time now, to create a software development company specializing in mobile and web applications in my hometown, Puerto Salgar. Find pilot boys, train them and teach them how to program and develop software from scratch," I said.

Juan David quite liked the idea and I remember that at that time we began to discuss and propose ideas about how it could be done. To create a company in a town where the light is constantly going out, the office, the infrastructure, finding the talent, a lot to solve. That same day, after debating for at least an hour, we set out to meet the following week to continue talking and make a plan to get everything up and running.

Diego, a friend of mine with whom I studied at school and who was also studying Systems Engineering, also adds to this story. I motivated him to learn programming and he used to help me with some freelance work when I was not enough. By the end of August, the three of us - Juan David, Diego and I - met to define and propose ideas and to start up the new company in Puerto Salgar. That day we defined an investment fund for 18’000.000 million of pesos - (4644 usd), the financial participation and the roles that each one was going to have in the company. With that money we could sustain the operations for at least six months, while we formed our first group of developers and started billing.

Problem #1 - Finding a group of kids interested in learning how to program and be part of the enterprise

After we had decided where we were going to start and had gathered the capital to finance the operations for the first six months, the first problem we had to solve was the equipment. We knew that in Puerto Salgar we would not find developers or engineers, so where could we get a group of guys who were interested in technology and wanted to learn how to program? Diego's mother was the principal of the Policarpa Salavarrieta School and could help us with that problem. I met with her - Professor Betty and told her about our idea, she was fascinated and to my surprise, there was a group of students who were doing a course related to software at a university in Bogotá, it was just what we were looking for. We scheduled a lunch with the whole group at the Hotel Chicala in the town.

I set out to travel from Bogotá to Puerto Salgar to meet the meeting. That day, I remember that I arrived and saw the group of boys gathered around two tables. The teacher greeted me and immediately introduced me to the group as a great businessman who wanted to invest in the region, when the truth was that I was just a beginning entrepreneur. I must confess that I felt a little strange, but the teacher was doing it with affection to help the boys take me seriously.

The goal of this meeting was to tell them all the details about the company and what a programmer's job is. I told them about the technology at that time and the vision of the future that was coming and although I noticed them a little lost, I continued with my talk. I remember that that day, one of the young people, with the surname Barrios, stood out from the rest asking me questions that no one else was asking. At the end of the meeting I told them that anyone who was interested in the project and wanted to start learning with us, could tell Professor Betty and she would let us know about it and we, through her, would let them know when we started the operation.

Problem #2 - Finding someone reliable in the town to leave in charge

The next problem was that we needed to leave someone in charge of the group and the office, since I had not yet quit my job and neither Juan David nor Diego were in Puerto Salgar. We needed someone who was directly responsible for the operation, a person we could trust to help us. My mother, - Aleyda, had told a young man about our project and he had been quite interested. She contacted him - Anderson and we talked on the phone. I interviewed him and he inspired in me enough confidence to move forward. In the following weeks, we arranged a meeting with Juan David, Diego, and I to meet Anderson, and in the process, Juan David got to know the town. After this meeting, Anderson had officially become our first employee and we agreed on a monthly payment of 800,000 pesos - (207 usd).

Problem #3 - Finding an office

Anderson's first task was to find a place to put the office. Puerto Salgar didn't have many options to choose from as an office, most were homes. We searched until we found a very good option that was close to a restaurant with a very particular name: "el tragadero", what a name! The good thing about the town is that the rentals are very cheap and don't ask for many requirements to rent. The rent of this garage with capacity for about 10 people cost us about 400,000 pesos - (103 usd).

Problem #4 - What are we going to name the company?

We already had the main thing, but we needed the cherry on the cake: what name are we going to give the company? We asked ourselves. There were many options, but in the end my idea was the winner.

As a child, my grandparents took me to some very famous swimming pools in Honda, Tolima called “Water, Sun and Joy”. I started to analyze the three elements and they reflect very well the culture of the hot land people, so, thinking and thinking, I came up with the name SunDevs. The word Sun perfectly reflects water and joy, then I added Devs, the English abbreviation for Developers. That's how the name of the company was born - SunDevs.

After solving all the problems, the people we were going to work with, the first employee, the office, the computers, the internet, the name of the company, we had already spent half of the initial budget. None of the partners had salaries at that time, we were living off our savings.

On November 1st 2015, in a garage, as the world's largest technology companies have begun, we officially opened the first SunDevs office.

I made the decision to move to Puerto Salgar and go back to live in the house where I grew up with my grandparents, which made me feel like I was back in school.

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The good stuff starts: teaching how to program

Anderson Lopez, Juber Pati?o, Juan David Barrios, Mateo Londo?o, German Agudelo, Juan Estrada, Jose Ramirez, Sergio Ramirez, Erick Huila, Juan David Herrera, Jose Cano, Alejandro Pe?a, Juan David Apolinar y Diego León.

This was the first team with which we started working in the first office. Of this group there were about 6 or 7 boys who were at the first meeting at the Chicala Hotel and were finishing their last school year. The office had been set up in such a way that it looked like a classroom. We had a board around the center to display the programming topics, we bought a coffee maker, snacks and each one had their own mug for coffee. We wanted them to feel comfortable the whole time they were there. We opened the office from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., that was the schedule we agreed on for the classes.

The first office of SunDevs

The first team of SunDevs

I developed a programming plan, which had everything necessary for a person to learn the basics and key concepts to start from scratch. The curriculum covered everything from explaining control flows on paper and pencil to object-oriented programming and design concepts.

The first week everyone was very punctual, motivated and happy to learn. I explained the topics to them and programmed the classes for each day with basic and very practical exercises. My goal was that they learned very well the bases, because I had clear that if someone has good programming fundamentals, later he will be able to understand and learn much easier any framework, library or programming language. For me, those first classes were very important.

As the weeks went by, we began to see that some people were missing a few days, the subject did not seem easy for them to understand as we had initially thought. We began to worry and had to react to what was happening. We realized that some people were living a little far from the office and sometimes they didn't come because they didn't have a way to transport themselves. To mitigate the problem, we decided to give each person a subsidy of 100,000 pesos (25 usd) per month. It wasn't much, but it would allow them to solve part of the problem and was one more motivation to continue. Since we do not charge absolutely nothing to teach them, my goal was always to teach them the same art that I learned: programming.

As any project, some people are interested at first and others not, and in the eighth week we began to see the first casualties, some people definitely didn't return to take classes (this was expected), but the good thing was that little by little the message that we were teaching free programming was expanding and new students were arriving.

José and Sergio were two brothers, the first was a Systems Engineering student at La Dorada, Caldas and the second had just graduated as a Mechatronic Engineer. We proposed them the same conditions that the rest of the group with the same help and what surprised me was that they accepted without problem, that was great because it gave me to understand that people were interested in learning to program. These two already had basic knowledge and their learning curve was going to be a little faster, in addition, they were going to serve us as support for the rest of the team. During those eight weeks we were financing the operation of the start-up fund that we had created, but we knew that that wasn't going to last long. The goal was to make this first group a productive development group with which we could start developing projects for other clients.

The first paid projects

For the development of projects we needed a graphic designer and we didn't have one. None of the guys knew how to handle design programs, or had color theory concepts, or anything like that. At that time a cousin of mine - Juan, who had studied film and television, heard about the project and was telling me that he was interested in applying. My cousin ended up being our first designer, he learned design for mobile and web applications, digital product design, at first he did it on his own computer, since we didn't have money to buy him one.

Freelance development projects began to arrive, like the ones I was doing while I had a job. The first group we had was in its third month and I felt it was time to test the results, so I made the decision to start with the freelance projects on my own name and develop these applications together with the team. It was true that there were some outstanding people on the team who already understood much better and were able to take on the challenge and others who needed more time to develop their skills. We started with the development of two freelance applications, one was a mobile application for android and the other a web platform with a mobile application for iOS.

We created working groups of two people to do the development. I was in charge of monitoring all the progress, solving technical problems, dealing with the client and making the deliveries of those projects, as well as the others in the group who were not assigned to projects kept studying and improving their knowledge.

The freelance projects we had committed to were completed on time. Although we had to run a bit, we delivered and the kids learned and achieved their first real project, which motivated them a lot to keep going. The freelance projects were our source of income and training for a while. They allowed us to finance the operation with the current cost structure, thanks to this source of income we were able to increase the subsidy to the boys who were still with us from 100,000 to 400,000 pesos (103 usd), so that they would remain more motivated.

The first client of United States

A couple more weeks went by, the freelance projects that were our source of income for a while were no longer enough to maintain the operation and more with the increases we had made in grants, our personal savings and the fund were already running out. So, by July we decided to make a very important decision, we decided to play the whole for the whole. With Juan and Diego we decided to take the money that was left in the fund and buy some tickets to the United States from July 28th to August 21th. The idea was to go first to Miami, Florida and then to New York in order to get clients. Juan got free lodging in Boca Raton, Florida, with a cousin he had there and the New York lodging we paid for by Airbnb, we got a room for 50 usd a night in Manhattan, which seemed like a bargain to us.

All our hopes and last savings were placed on that trip, we had to get clients or we would have to go back and tell everyone that we had been training for these last 6 months and SunDevs was no longer going. In addition, we would be forced to return to the employee lives we used to have.

I had known LinkedIn when it was just starting to be popular in Colombia, I had created my profile in this network, I was constantly updating it with all my previous work and experiences. One day I received a message from a person who had a company in the United States and was looking for a team of developers to work with. He wanted to know if I was interested and if I could travel to Miami the following week. LOTTERY! Do you believe in fate or beginner's luck, as this was just one of those cases. We already had a client to visit on our first trip and it was close to where we were going.

The day of the trip arrived and I was nervous, my partner, Juan David, not so much, he had been out of the country before, but for me it was the first time he was leaving Colombia. That day my mom, my brother and my partner Nataly, accompanied me to the airport, they have always been with me at all times.

It was time to take off, the plane took off and within 3 hours I was looking out the window at the city of Miami. That moment for me was great, it was another world completely different, I felt very excited and grateful with life for having given me this opportunity. While some of my friends and family had traveled to the United States on vacation, my first time was for business.

We arrived at the airport in Fort Lauderdale and I was fascinated. We had rented a car at a place near the airport. The first thing that occurred to us was to take a cab, we got in and the driver started, then he asked us where we were going and we told him to stop the car rental that was nearby. At that moment, the man in the cab began to speak in English very quickly, clearly he had gotten angry about something. When we arrived at the place, we paid him and he told us not to do that again, that there is a bus (shuttle) that takes us specially to that place and it is free, he had been waiting in line for a good time for a good race and the race for us was only 12 usd. In conclusion, we made him miss his turn. We understood why he was angry.

At the car rental, we set out to claim the car, we lined up, it was our turn and we handed in the necessary papers. In the United States when you rent a car the best thing to do is to pay a little more for the all-risk insurance in case of an accident, we didn't have much money, so we didn't pay it. The counselor asked us several times if we were sure. In the parking lot we waited for an employee who minutes later arrived with a late model Camaro Convertible, the employee stopped the car, got out, handed us the keys and told us: this is your car. Juan David and we thought he was pulling our leg and told him we had rented a sedan. The employee came up to me, took my hand and forced me into the Camaro and said: this is your car. We didn't understand why we had gotten that car, but it didn't matter, the trip couldn't have been better and now we had a convertible car for the price of a Sedan, we started that engine and started our adventure.

Juan David (left) and Fabian Leon (right)

The next day we had our meeting with the client in his offices. We traveled about an hour and a half from Boca Raton to Miami by car. Once we arrived, we entered a meeting room and there we were made to wait a few minutes while the client arrived. My partner and I were a little nervous, the CEO and CTO entered the meeting room, introduced ourselves and then offered our services. Once we were done, they told us they wanted a development team that could support some of their products, exactly what they needed and in which technologies. In addition, they mentioned all the terms of the contract. Once we agreed on an hourly rate that made sense to both of us, the whole process of resource evaluation started, coordinating interviews and technical tests between the client's team and our resources in Colombia. The process lasted about 4 days, from which we traveled from Boca Raton to Miami for 3 days in a row.

We managed to close our first business with this company and the next day we started providing the service. The rest of the days we had left from the trip to Miami, besides working and checking that everything was going perfectly, we took advantage of them to visit the beach and get to know the area a little better.

The next part of the trip was to New York, we felt a little limited in time because we didn't imagine we would be working from there for our Miami client. However, we were very happy with the result we had achieved, so we decided to go to a bank and create a bank account for ourselves, since we had not yet created the company in the United States or in Colombia to receive the payments. We set up the account in one day with just our passport. We also did networking and got to know part of the city's development ecosystem and visited the Big Apple. I was amazed by those skyscrapers. We also bought a detail from each member of the team in Puerto Salgar.

We went to the United States with what we needed and the hope of being able to continue with the dream we had started and we returned to Colombia with a very interesting business that gave us life and allowed us to continue working to grow our company and reach the next level.

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SunDevs 2.0

In August we arrived to Colombia again and traveled to Puerto Salgar very motivated. The challenge now was, besides fulfilling all the client's tasks and exceeding their expectations, to stay alive until the day of payment of the first invoice. The reality was that we ran out of money and had to borrow from an aunt to pay that month's expenses. She trusted me a lot and knew that it wouldn't look bad for her.

After working for almost two months for our client in the United States and going through several challenges, we finally received our first payment in dollars and with that money we were able to pay back what we had borrowed to cover the operating costs. Thanks to that first business we did on that first trip, we were able to continue with the company and start improving some things, among them, we went from paying a 400,000 pesos allowance to paying competitive salaries for the region where we were, in addition to some benefits such as the gym and english classes. We also formalized the company in Colombia.

Thus, several months of work went by, in which little by little our situation improved, more clients and projects to develop arrived, some local and one or another from the United States. We were able to save some money and bought very good computer equipment, more comfortable chairs to work in, mobile devices, smartwatches, arduinos, voice assistants like Amazon Alexa and Google Home, among others, to start testing and experimenting with new technologies. We also decided to move to a new office of over 240m2, located in a two-story house with a huge patio and modern architecture in one of the best neighborhoods in town.

In the house we adapted several areas, a large part was for production and development, another for entertainment, where we had a TV, an Xbox One console, a Play Station 4 and a video-beam. We also had a parking area, another green area with a mini beach soccer field and next to it we put a ping pong table. We had a BBQ area and a rest and relaxation area. The kitchen was the best because it was american style, we made breakfast and lunch there. Upstairs there were four rooms where some of the developers stayed when they needed it. We decided to approve a biweekly budget to buy market, we wanted everyone to feel comfortable at work and so, little by little, the office became a second home for everyone. We spent more time here than at home. It was not that we were working all the time, but it had become that special place to meet and share with each other.

We would finish our work day and go to play 5-a-side soccer on a synthetic pitch and then go somewhere to eat together again. The reality is that we didn't spend all our time together and there wasn't a weekend that you didn't go out to the center of town and meet someone from the office. The co-workers became more like a brotherhood, we had a great time.

People in town looked at us strangely, wondered what that group of kids was doing in that house all the time, people didn't understand how we made a living, we gave a lot to talk about in La Dorada and Puerto Salgar.

In addition, we organized two types of events. One was the Meetups, which consisted of technical talks to which we invited friends and acquaintances, to come to our offices and learn about what we were doing. This was done by a member of the team who would expose a topic of technology, we would buy pizza and drinks for everyone. The other event we did was the Beer & Code, which consisted of reserving a bar or a place to eat and inviting people interested in technology to come and bring their computer and we would help them solve some technical problem or write code together. The goal of both events was to network and meet new talent. The community at that time of developers in these places was practically null, almost nobody knew how to program, in SunDevs we worried about contributing to the community, to make it grow and to share what we knew to do with the others.

 SunDevs Team 2.0

The following year, in 2016, I traveled to San Francisco, California, with a group of entrepreneurs and people traveling with Siliconvalley.travel, the startup of a friend who is dedicated to bringing people to know the entrepreneurial ecosystem of that city, I was eager to go to the mecca of technology, that trip lasted about three weeks. I stayed in San Francisco in a cooliving together with the other members of the group, in those days the agenda was to go to some conferences, meetups, meet with some people, among other activities.

Two weeks later the initial group I had traveled with left. The next week I went to the bank and created the company in the United States, which has served us well to this day. The process of creating a company in this country is much easier than it seems, I remember when I signed the papers, seeing the bank manager coming over and shaking my hand and thanking me for trusting his bank and creating the company there. This would be very strange to happen in Colombia.

In those days I also kept the appointment I had with one of our clients for whom we were making a web application for android & iOS. The trip was great especially because while I was there I was able to meet with a couple of Colombians who worked at Google and Fitbit, they gave me the opportunity to enter the offices and get to know what each of the companies was like inside, it was a wonderful experience.

The change of city

At the end of 2016 we needed to make a radical change to continue growing and improving as people, professionals and as a company. From the beginning we knew that a technology company is pure talent, therefore, we had to invest in our people, in making their work experience the best we could offer them, also, seek and identify all the time new potential talent, that is why we bet on creating community.

Although, when we began to train people with interest in learning to program from scratch, we realized that it was a rather long curve to assume as a company. We had always had very judicious people who learned to program quickly and did it very well, however, the clients were increasingly demanding with time and results, we were aware that we were going to need access to a more specialized talent pool with more experience in software development and that was not so easy to find in La Dorada and Puerto Salgar.

We sat down to analyze the issue and decided that the best thing for the team and for the company was to move our entire operation to Ibague, Tolima, an intermediate city with about 600,000 inhabitants, located about 3 hours from La Dorada, Caldas. This city already had a slightly more developed infrastructure, with several universities with the degree of Systems Engineering, shopping malls and better internet. Almost all of the young people were familiar with the city because it was where we would come on Sundays in a caravan to see movies and return the same day, the atmosphere was very similar to that of La Dorada, only with better infrastructure and a more pleasant climate.

It was not an easy decision for the team to make, especially since it was my idea to start the company in my town and then it was me who ended up deciding to change cities. It is a paradox, but I'm one of those who believe that everything has a cycle and that we had already experienced and learned enough, so it was time for a change. In February 2017 we opened our office in Ibague, we had made the best effort to make the change of city for the boys easy, we rented a house very close to the office where those who wanted to go live in Ibague stayed and the others continued working from the town without any problem.

Today in SunDevs we are already six years old, we are in office 602 in the World Trade Center Ibague building and we have developed more than 60 projects for both local and foreign clients. In the team we are 60 people, a very diverse team with people from La Dorada, Puerto Salgar, Ibague and Bogota. We continue to work with all the positive energy that characterizes us, serving our clients and enjoying what we do.

SunDevs Team at Ibague, Tolima

The story's lesson

The main motivation for which I wrote this story, was basically to tell how my partners and I started this dream of creating a company with what we knew how to do, with our own savings and in my town, with the hope that someday one of you who are reading right now, will be encouraged to create your own company.

I, at the age of 26, with 4 years of experience as a software developer, without children, without debt, with my savings, decided to leave my job in Bogotá and return to Puerto Salgar, Cundinamarca, to create a software company with people who did not know how to program. There was a lot at stake in all this, normal people would think that I should have taken my savings and bought a car, a motorcycle, a good trip or pay the down payment for an apartment.

Why did I decide to risk everything for an adventure like this?

Because I had nothing to lose, because I was not tied to anything or anyone, because my will power to want to do my own business was much greater than working for someone else's, and finally, because I wanted to contribute something to society and what better than to share this art I have learned, with the people of my own town. The investment that my partners and I made has been more than recovered and what I have learned building SunDevs I would not have learned in any university or company.

Why Puerto Salgar?

Why my town or why Ibague and not a city like Bogota or Medellín? Because I believe in the potential that exists in intermediate cities and in the talent that there is to be discovered in these and the surrounding towns. In Colombia, the economy is centralized in a couple of cities, that's what causes the traffic congestion, the case, the insecurity and all those problems by accumulating work, wealth and opportunities in a few places.

I've been walking to work for four years now and that's invaluable to me. I'm also reassured that the people who work with me feel just as calm and comfortable in the city where they live and work. Ibagué has a gigantic potential to become a technology hub in Colombia, it has the location, the infrastructure, everything is close, the time is very productive. Although today it is known as the musical city of Colombia, I hope that tomorrow it will be known as a great Technology Hub that houses several of the main offices of startups and the largest and most innovative companies in the country.

The Invitation

If you find yourself in a similar situation to what I was some time ago and you have nothing to lose, I invite you to dare to execute that dream you have, with a partner or friend who believes in your idea. The worst thing that can happen is that you fail, but then you will be one step closer to that dream you are pursuing.