Meet Jason Timm, CEO and co-founder of CloudSmiths
Jason Timm is the CEO and co-founder of CloudSmiths and has been CEO for the past two years. Prior to this, he held previous roles at the company such as Managing Director and Sales Director. Since becoming CEO, he has had a real personal passion for growing the Salesforce ecosystem. He is passionate about the words we use to communicate to enable people to build their own vision.
There’s always a lightbulb moment before the beginning of a new venture. What was that moment for you?
The lightbulb moment for me happened at my previous job, right before I co-founded CloudSmiths. I reported directly to the CIO, who at the time was replacing our on-premise CRM system with Salesforce. At the time, we always described it as “a cloud-based system” in inverted commas. At the system, I was deploying an on-premise solution for the largest Africa Telco, across 21 of their operating companies using an on-premise SQL replication. It was clunky, slow and quite frankly not fit for purpose. In understanding how Salesforce architected its products, began a journey which led us to start CloudSmiths. From the first day, our passion and strategy has been cloud-first.
What is your day-to-day role with the company?
As the CEO of CloudSmiths, my daily routine extends beyond the conventional boundaries of strategic planning and operational oversight. I see every CloudSmiths team and department as a platform for creative potential. I have seen firsthand how personal investment, the space to experiment and an entrepreneurial spirit can foster innovation, so I am committed to creating that environment for our people.
I also serve on the Salesforce Partner Advisory Board as part of my commitment to harnessing trends and uncovering data, AI and CRM opportunities. This role allows me to provide valuable feedback and guidance to Salesforce on programs, products and industry solutions.
What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learnt so far as an entrepreneur?
One of the biggest lessons I've learned is the importance of embracing change rather than fearing it. Change is not only inevitable. It's essential. While perhaps ideal for today's market, your strategy, offerings, people, systems, and approach may not fit tomorrow's. A business must be a dynamic entity, constantly evolving, ready to adapt to anything.
What’s the single most important decision that you made that contributed to your business?
Well, this would undoubtedly be the merger we undertook last year with DotModus.
DotModus was another business in our group (Dynamic Technologies). CloudSmiths and Dotmodus were similar in age and size (founded around 2010, with a team of one hundred or so people). The main difference being that we at CloudSmiths were the Salesforce people, and Dotmodus were the Google Cloud people. Marrying these technologies and skillsets has been remarkably successful, especially considering Salesforce’s recent announcement about integrating Salesforce Data Cloud with Google BigQuery and Google Vertex AI.
What plans do you have for CloudSmiths over the next two years?
We tend to think in five-year plans, and over the next five years, we have three main strategies for growth: expand our presence in the UK, bring our offering to the UAE and the surrounding region, and develop our offering in the South African market.
We are a global business, with all of our most senior delivery leadership based in the UK. We have a significant South African delivery engine with a small team in India/Pakistan. The same time zone compatibility, cultural affinity and advantageous exchange rates give us a unique ability to deliver cost-effective solutions with smooth communication and collaboration.
In South Africa, our focus revolves around growing into new industries. Every business has unique challenges, but generally speaking, many of the levers for success are similar whether you’re in retail, telecoms, media etc. Understanding your customers deeply, leveraging your data efficiently, and harnessing AI's transformative power is essential for any modern business. So, our strategic focus in South Africa will centre around harnessing our IP, packaging our solutions, and bringing them to customers in new industries to address specific challenges around data, CRM and AI swiftly.
At CloudSmiths, technology isn't just central to our conversation. It's our language. Our mission isn't just to offer “something functional”; we aim to be digital architects, transitioning our clients from a zero-tech base to operational excellence powered by cutting-edge technology. Simply put, we don't just provide. We transform.
How do you prepare for all the unknown obstacles when running your business?
I think the pandemic taught us all a big lesson. You can read all the Jim Collins you want, spend every morning commute listening to business podcasts, and fall asleep to TED Talks on leadership, but you can’t prepare for every eventuality.
The key lies not in predicting these challenges but in maintaining an adaptive mindset and clear vision of our end goal. The readiness to innovate rather than just react is critical.
Describe your business in three words.
Innovative. Collaborative. Nurturing.
How important is company culture and what is your top tip to get it right?
Developing and maintaining a healthy company culture is paramount. Understandably, there are countless books on the subject because it’s a difficult thing to get right, especially in remote business or industry.
CloudSmiths is intrinsically a very entrepreneurial company. Our role in management is to cultivate this spirit, nurturing individuals who are eager to innovate, create and discover.
With our guidance and support, within the safety net of the greater business, I want people to have the courage to try new approaches, think differently and potentially even grow beyond CloudSmiths. There is nothing I love more than to see people have the opportunity to do the things they never thought they would have the chance to do.
Fostering a culture of entrepreneurship is key to our company culture. Companies should give their employees the space to explore, learn and discover new ways of doing business.
What are your top tips for entrepreneurs wanting to get their business out there?
One of the most influential things I was told is that “Nothing is more important than time in the seat’. Everyone wants to build a business and sell it for millions quickly, but, in my opinion, that’s not where the joy of business is. The greatest joy in business lies in leading a team of 50 and devising strategies for growing that team to 100, then to 200, and so on.
The most valuable piece of advice I can offer to any entrepreneur is this: time in the seat is crucial. There are some learnings that only time can provide. Remember to be patient with yourself, embrace the process of learning, and avoid rushing through your career. I was told this when I was 25 and it's just as relevant and true 15 years on.
Where do you draw your inspiration from to continue pursuing and innovating in the tech space?
There’s a moment that has always stuck with me. In the early days of CloudSmiths, we were a team of ten people tirelessly serving five customers around Johannesburg. Many of our days were spent driving back and forth between these five customers. Naturally, we’d drive similar routes each time, passing all the same big office blocks and buildings along the way.
The moment of inspiration for me came when, after a few years, I realised that many of the big businesses we passed on our drives to our original five customers had become customers themselves. The buildings we used to pass were now each integral parts of our growth.
I look back on that moment of realisation as both humbling and inspiring. It's a reminder of our journey, the progress we've made, and the potential heights we can still achieve.
How do you believe the evolution of tech will impact your industry over the next 10 years?
The evolution of technology, specifically the rise of AI, will undeniably be the most transformative force in our industry over the next decade.
New tools and technologies from Google and Salesforce are enabling us to design intelligent, AI-powered solutions that extend beyond traditional capabilities. This progression has effectively thrown open the floodgates to a new era of technological advancements.
Our industry, particularly the data and cloud sectors, will see tremendous opportunities for both us and our clients. We’ve stopped asking, "Can the technology support this?". Instead, we now find ourselves asking, “What more can we solve?”.
The future AI provides is a blank canvas, and the next decade promises a thrilling exploration of how far we can push the boundaries and what more we can solve for our customers.
