Tech Helping Tech: John Orrock on Cloud Sherpas and Future Now
The Founder of Future Now Ventures shares entrepreneurial lessons from the Cloud Sherpas acquisition and what’s next for the Philippines’ startup ecosystem
John Orrock and Future Now’s portfolio companies
With last month’s news of Accenture’s acquisition of Cloud Sherpas, Philippine and regional startups were quick to congratulate John Orrock, Cloud Sherpas Founder and Senior VP for Asia Pacific.
To have a Philippine-operated startup to be primarily acquired by a multinational corporation is the dream of many entrepreneurs. Orrock is one of the few living the startup dream, complete with running his boutique firm, Future Now Ventures.
To understand how Orrock’s success came to be, as well as his mentality on failure and startups, one must briefly look at his history.
A peek at the past
The year was 1998. Orrock had just arrived in the Philippines, working on offshore development centres (ODCs) with his company. SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) was still an unknown concept to most tech entrepreneurs, with the terms ‘on-demand’ and ‘ASP (Application Service Provider)’ still popular.
It was this industry that Orrock grew familiar with, along with enterprise solutions and offshore development strategies.
Using the experience he had in these fields, Orrock then founded and established OKERE in New York City, which was the first Salesforce.com consulting firm to focus on enterprise vertical solutions.
OKERE would later become a leading consulting partner of Salesforce.com, be acquired by Fujitsu Consulting North America, and have fully-operational offices in New York, London and Sydney.
With his first company acquisition by Fujitsu, Orrock was hopeful of repeating his success with another company similar to OKERE.
In 2007, he set up GlobalOne, which would later be known as Cloud Sherpas. With his established partnerships in OKERE, GlobalOne became a pioneer in SaaS and cloud consulting, and became a strong consulting partner of Salesforce.com.
In 2011, GlobalOne then received a US$15M funding from Columbia Capital in order to expand its team and grow the firm with targetted acquisitions.
Thus in 2012, GlobalOne merged with Cloud Sherpas, with Orrock and many other stakeholders deciding to keep the name Cloud Sherpas after. With this new transition, Orrock additionally became Cloud Sherpas’ Senior VP for Asia Pacific.
As the startup ecosystem in the Philippines was already thriving starting early 2013, Orrock managed to set up his third company, Barhead, which won Microsoft’s 2014 Partner of the Year, with the company selling Microsoft Cloud Services to various market segments in the Philippines.
Orrock decided that “the future is now”and this thought led him to create his first boutique venture capital firm, Future Now Ventures.
Currently, the venture capital has 19 portfolio companies in its list, with industries that focus on online merchandising, SaaS and cloud enterprise solutions, consulting, innovation and platform foundation.
Give people opportunities
When speaking to Orrock on his incubation investment philosophy, he shares that he believes strongly in several things:
Focus on R&D first before incubation. Researching about one’s idea doesn’t have to take years; serial entrepreneurship, necessary experience and hard validation are what entrepreneurs need to move past the R&D stage.
Fund entrepreneurs who aren’t done iterating with their product; fund entrepreneurs who already know their target market and have clear solutions to tackle their problems.
Ultimately, investments boil down to the person and the idea. Startups should be open to venture capital firms mentoring or providing spaces for them, but not always writing them a cheque.
Orrock personally defines incubation as having “both the funding and equity in place”. Moreover, Future Now helps its portfolio companies in certain areas such as legal paperwork, tax filings, go-to-market strategies, recruitment, and temporary customer/operational support.
The Founder believes that by doing so, he is able to build the right foundation for his investees.
Orrock also adds that setting up Future Now Ventures in the Philippines was intentional. Over the years, he has noticed Filipinos who live in other countries perform better than the locals; so why the discrepancy?
“Give people opportunities,” he states, adding, “There is significant talent and business opportunities in the Philippines. As like everything else, innovation programmes and startup models must be regionalised. We need to merge what works in Silicon Valley with what will work here.”
Moving the next generation forward
As a typical man of action, Orrock has also partnered with the USAID and top Philippine universities to help college students realise that their thesis papers can become a reality.
Divided in two phases, his programme will have college students post their thesis ideas on an online marketplace, where visitors can view and assess them.
In the second phase of this programme, Orrock also intends to provide students with the appropriate connections and global exposure in order to do proper R&D.
The goal for this programme is to train college students in making proper research decisions on their thesis ideas, such as if there is an actual market, or if their proposed product can be bought or partnered with another business in another country.
Students in the programme will also need to confirm if any other companies are already acting on their thesis ideas, and if they can improve on those ideas or add-on to existing products in the market.
Overall, Orrock says, college students need proper validation of their ideas in the real world. “We are excited to leverage our experience and capabilities, and provide a national and global platform for Filipinos to share their ideas and promote their talents. We believe developing human capital is a critical programme for advancing the Philippines [which will be critical in] increasing the overall quality of life for all demographics.”
More details about the programme will be announced on November 7, with the intent of also inviting external applicants and holding an ‘idea awards programme’ on January 2016. The online marketplace and inventory is projected to be completed by the end of March 2016.
“We want to have a programme that has no strings attached, no equity taken for these college kids. All of this is to promote innovation, whether it’s a business model, an optimisation strategy, or a hardware or software. We need to start the ball rolling,” he adds.
Truer words were never said from the man that built three companies, sold two of them to multinational firms and who is currently funneling growth and innovation to startups and students in the Philippines.
This is part of our Tech Helping Tech series, where we feature companies in Asia that are helping to solve business problems for the tech industry and startup ecosystems. Find out more on how one of Future Now Venture’s portfolio companies listed itself on the e27 Marketplace here. For more great products and services designed to benefit your growing business, visit e27.co/marketplace.
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