Eldon Marks is the founder and CEO of V75 Inc. (V75), Co-founder of WeOwn Space and Founding Director of Nexus Hub Inc.
Marks, a thirty-four-year-old husband and father of two, describes himself as an unsuspecting businessman who was motivated by a perceived need. He also describes himself as a social entrepreneur, is a software developer and educator, and is on a mission to create an enabling environment for tech in Guyana.
Marks attended Stella Maris Primary before moving on to The Bishops’ High. In 2000, he enrolled in the University of Guyana to pursue a Degree in Computer Science and graduated in 2004. In 2008, he pursued his master’s degree in Computer Science at Howard University, Washington DC, USA where he completed the program in three semesters with a 4.0 GPA.
Marks had been employed at the University of Guyana in the Department of Computer Science as an Assistant Lecturer – teaching, mentoring and doing research – and believes he was fortunate because the environment helped to catapult him professionally. He had a conviction to ensure that others could find their way and so he began to think about ways to help shape youth and help them discover their hidden talents. Since he was in tech, it was the natural outlet.
Version 75 Solutions (V75) was his first venture. It was registered in 2014, but the initiative began with students who were interested in freelancing. Marks had experience in writing proposals and building portfolios. He decided to create a brand with the purpose to help the students build their portfolios. Initially, he put all his projects under the brand and the students also listed their projects under V75. Within a year and a half, V75 had fostered six brands and had secured some decent accounts for clients abroad, which helped them grow.
Social impact was always an integral part. The main motivation was not for profit, but to create opportunities. V75 also made it their responsibility to help the youth by participating in career day presentations, and arranged mobile app development training and workshops in high schools.
In 2017, V75 organized their first digital industry exhibition. It was an online exhibition accompanied by offline events. They built a platform for local technologists, graphic artists and researchers. Over seventy entities were registered, and they published over two hundred portfolio entries. The exhibition lasted the entire month of August and was called DevX. Their offline events were at WeOwn Space which is a shared office space and ecosystem for entrepreneurs.
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From data collected, V75 realized that there were low rates of collaboration, innovation, and global market penetration, which are all precursors for tech industry growth anywhere. They decided that if they were going to have a future in Guyana, they needed to address those deficits, so the community got together again and discussed the best course of action. Nexus Hub Inc. was created. It is the non-profit arm of V75. It was launched in July 2018, and since its launch four tech movements emerged. One was a paid apprenticeship program where they trained specialists to find them jobs in tech. Five persons were trained and immediately after the three-month program they were employed. They have been funded for another round of the apprenticeship program and are working with others to create specialists to find them jobs within the field of tech. The second movement was the Hack Solve activity where a group of developers and non-developers came together to solve social problems using tech. It was a hackathon-like activity where persons developed software in a restricted time frame. They were given a venue, fed and provided internet, and in three days they were able to look at problems submitted by the public and came up with prototypes, which they then presented. It was a success and they wanted stay together and continue their work. It spurred a few other movements such as the Hack Solver group. They meet on a weekly basis and are engaged in activities like training children from the Guyana Technical Institute (GTI) to get into tech and become Hack solvers. They also had the developers’ stories which were mini-documentaries. The documentaries were produced in collaboration with people within their network and were less than two minutes long and published every week on social media. Marks is amazed with how far he and the community has come. But if he were to start all over again, he would make wiser investments to accelerate growth to reach the objectives sooner.Nonetheless, he has gained experience through trial and error and is grateful that everything has grown organically. His advice to others is to have the correct motivation which he believes is a ‘value first’ mentality. The journey has been rewarding because Marks believes that the best investment is investing in others. Marks wants to build a legacy. He believes that tech has the right recipe to create great leaders. He emphasized that tech programs, the way you think and look at ways to solve problems, create more objective thinkers, more efficient problem solvers, and more emotional intelligent people. Marks also wants to create a mass of technologists, developers, and one of V75’s immediate goals is to create a tech park. A tech park is a complex with an expanse of buildings, but all those buildings are occupied by tech companies. They are aspiring to a smaller version of it because they are a growing tech industry. Creating entrepreneurs of tomorrow, they will need places to expand their ventures, facilities to mentor and nurture them so they will help to create more developers. The first milestone they hope to accomplish within five years. There have been challenges, but Marks never thought of giving up. “The only time a challenge would get the better of you is if you don’t respond.”
Questions
How did you arrive at the idea for your business?
It was based on a perceived gap or need – V75, the tech community disguised as a company, weOwn space, the coworking space and Nexus Hub Inc, the non-profit tech and innovation center were all devised and launched because there weren’t any deliberate environments in Guyana which served as professional communities to nurture local talent, provide outlets for their skills to reach clients and create opportunities for professional development through tech.
What was your key driving force to become an entrepreneur?
To be honest, there was never a clear ambition in me to become an entrepreneur, instead, entrepreneurship found me – specifically, social entrepreneurship became the ideal outlet which allowed me to use my skills to make a difference and create value for others.
What is your greatest challenge being an entrepreneur?
My greatest challenge as an entrepreneur (with a family to boot) is getting my body to keep up with my drive and how demanding and varied my day-to-day has become. From time-to-time I feel the negative effects set in, such as brain fog, but there’s nothing a power nap can’t remedy.
What has been your most satisfying moment in business?
It was after my first company, V75 hit the 5-year mark; I was reflecting in awe how an idea can manifest over the years to become an association of individuals who have now become authors of new ideas, which in turn, further created upon what was once a simple thought, from a single individual. It was then that I realized the power of an idea – this was indeed most satisfying to me.
What piece of advice would you give to other young people who want to become entrepreneurs?
When becoming an entrepreneur, adopt a value-first mentality and ask not how much profit you can make from others but how much value you and your brand can deliver to others – this, to me, has been the critical determiner of my success; your wealth and your worth to society are linked.
How do you define success?
Success is simply never letting a setback stop you long enough to call it a failure. It is remaining fluid, adaptive, responsive and fixated on achieving your desired objective.
Who has been your greatest inspiration?
This may sound odd, but it has been that part of myself that tells me every day to be of purpose, on purpose; that fear is only a chemical response that has lost its relevance in this day and age; to follow your dreams no matter how bizarre they may seem and to believe in yourself.
