A JAMAICAN PIONEER

Claire noted that the next crucial question is, ‘Does the business align well with who I am?’ If the answer to this question is ‘no’, and money is the sole motivation, they should be prepared for a difficult ride.

“One of the most difficult things as an entrepreneur is to be doing something that doesn’t fit with you. It’s probably not going to work, because what it takes to build a business takes so much of your soul that if it’s just money that’s driving you, you’re gonna give up on it, or it’s gonna give up on you,” he said.

“When you go to any investor, whether it’s an angel or a venture capitalist, or the bank, one of the things they want to see is not only do you believe in this thing that you’re trying to do, but does it align well with who you are?”

He pointed to one of his investees, Patria-Kaye Aarons and her company Sweetie Confectionery, as a good example of such alignment.

“Whenever I see dissonance between the person’s characteristics, their proclivities, their interests, their competencies, and what they’re talking about spending their time doing, it gives me cause for pause,” he said.

INDUSTRY PIONEER

There is certainly no dissonance where Claire and LoanCirrus are concerned, given his background and commitment to Jamaica. His company is pioneering an entire industry locally, as it is the first global SaaS business built in and operated out of the country. The product was built in Jamaica, from conceptua-lisation to engineering, and the entire team is based here.

Claire is hopeful that their success will be a catalyst for others in the local techno-logy industry to use as a guide. “It’s not just about building an app. I t ’s not j ust about building software. It’s about building a business around that,” he said.

“Where I see a disconnect locally is that you have a lot of people with programming skills, but that’s all they have. That’s not gonna get you a successful business. What you need to understand is that yes, you can build an app, but that’s not the same as building a business. The app is just the product. They need people to help them understand how to take this piece of technology that you’ve created and figure out how to make that a business. Hopefully, we can help to be an inspiration for that.”