Soluntech: 10 years developing the best custom software

In June 2022, Soluntech turned ten. We have asked our CEO, Alejandro Zakzuk, to tell us the story of how Soluntech was born, how it became the company it is today, and what he expects from the future.

Face-to-face Soluntech meeting

Alejandro's background

I was born in Cartagena, Colombia, in 1979. As a child, I was very curious and liked to know how things worked - I would take a toy apart to see the internal parts and try to put it back together. Then, when I was 11, I became passionate about computers. So I stayed at school after classes to learn to program the Basics. Then, in the middle of the 90s, I became curious about creating web applications and decided to learn programming, initially on my own.

In 1998, I moved to the UK to finish my undergraduate studies in Business Management. While studying, I worked part-time in a company that organized business conferences, and they needed to create web pages for each conference. Thanks to my experience, I made a solution to automate the creation of those web pages. I kept working with this company after my graduation.

In 2001, I took a master's degree in Software Engineering, at the University of Westminster, in London. With an excellent practical and theoretical background in the development field, I became an independent contractor, but the desire to found my own company made me return to Colombia in 2012.

Alejandro Zakzuk- CEO

Soluntech early years

I came back to Colombia because the technology market here was behind in comparison with the European. Technologies that were normal there haven't penetrated the Colombian market at the moment. The knowledge I had acquired during my years in Europe put me in an excellent position.

In June 2012, I registered my business as a computer company in Colombia. First, with a cloud computing focus. At the time, Cloud computing was the cutting-edge technology, and I founded Soluntech with the desire to bring the largest number of Colombian companies to the cloud. 

When I arrived, I got certified in Google Cloud and Amazon AWS and started offering services in the cloud, such as migration and development of applications and web pages. However, that was where the first setback came. Colombian companies didn't trust cloud technology. There were still many doubts about its security and if it would be a long-term technology, so I had to change my business idea. 

A revolutionary discovery: low-code platforms

I needed to redirect my business and decided to change my target. I was familiar with the European and American markets, so I focused my efforts there. At the same time, I came into contact with low-code platforms; I developed an application with which service companies could change service orders from spreadsheets to a web application.

These low-code platforms caught my attention. They saved a lot of development time and still make a really good quality business application. Moreover, I considered it a disruptive platform that could differentiate Soluntech from the other development companies, Specially in Colombia, where this technology was almost unknown and underused. 

The new Soluntech, growth, and transformations

The first low-code platform I came in contact with was Knack. Thanks to my experience as a developer, I stood out a lot in the Knack builders community. People started hiring me to do low-code development for their businesses or rescue their applications when they no longer knew how to continue. I was getting so many clients that I could no longer handle them myself, so I hired the first Soluntech employee in 2015.

The company continued to grow, and I trained new developers to work with low-code platforms. After that, we started using other platforms like Caspio, Tadabase, and no-code platforms like Bubble. Our excellent work led to larger and more complex projects that required from-scratch development for mobile and web applications. Some of them were even game-changers in their industries. 

Soluntech has had a 1005 remote-work policy since 2014, long before the pandemic. Due to this, Soluntech grew a lot during 2020 and 2021 since we were already used to remote work. In addition, we developed our corporate culture by holding face-to-face strategic meetings several times a year and carrying out integration activities, which usually include a company trip with the whole team.

Today, Soluntech is a company where more than 50 people work. Our team is primarily based in Colombia but has people based in Argentina, USA, and UK too. We offer our employees the possibility to work from wherever they are, giving them the freedom to travel.

Members of the Soluntech team in Bogotá

What we want from the future

Our vision is to bring the era of digital intelligence to every corner of this world. To make it a reality, for each disruptive idea that our clients bring, we create a plan to make it a reality. In other words, we encourage entrepreneurship that has the potential to improve the lives of millions. Ultimately, we want to stimulate the number of disruptive products and services that, in turn, increase people's life quality. For this, we are training our team in new cutting-edge technologies and want to become a quality benchmark in developing Blockchain, VR, AI, or Gaming projects.

On the other hand, as a company, we want to continue growing. Soluntech has been increasing its sales year after year. Our most ambitious goal is to become listed on the stock market, a projected dream for 2037. In the short term, we want to become a benchmark technology ally that offers innovation and development of good quality for Start-Ups and companies worldwide.