AI-generated summary
“Coffee with Entrepreneurs,” an initiative by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, offers insights into the journeys of startup leaders. The autumn 2021 session features David Amorín, founder and CEO of JOTELULU, a startup that provides a cloud services platform enabling small IT firms to become Cloud Computing providers for SMEs. David’s background as a computer engineer and his experience in the US and Spain shaped his path from founding Adder Solutions, an IT consulting firm focused on SMEs, to launching JOTELULU. His key insight was identifying the challenges SMEs face with major cloud providers—complexity, cost, and lack of specialized IT resources—and creating a niche by offering a simplified, scalable white-label platform tailored for IT SMEs to serve their clients.
JOTELULU’s success stems from understanding its target market, adopting a “blue ocean” strategy by focusing on underserved SMEs, and defining a business model centered on IT partners rather than direct end customers. The platform emphasizes “360 simplicity” with easy-to-use functionalities, competitive pricing, and exceptional customer support built on closeness, trust, and affection, achieving a near-excellent NPS of 9.73. Plans for international expansion include entering Portugal and establishing a service hub in Amsterdam to cover Europe. David advises entrepreneurs to start projects solving problems they deeply understand, emphasizing thorough market knowledge before scaling. JOTELULU benefits from Venture Capital backing through collaboration between Bankinter Innovation Foundation and Bankinter Venture Capital, supporting high-potential startups.
As part of the "Coffee with Entrepreneurs" cycle, we have had David Amorín, founder and CEO of JOTELULU, a reference in the world of cloud computing for SMEs.
“Coffee with Entrepreneurs” is the initiative of the Bankinter Innovation Foundation that brings you closer to leaders of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to learn first-hand about their experience and trajectory in the startup.
We close the autumn 2021 cycle with David Amorín, founder and CEO of our latest investee startup: JOTELULU, which has a cloud services platform that helps transform small IT companies into Cloud Computing providers for SMEs.
In his chat with José Carlos Huerta, our Head of Analysis of the Startups Program, David told us how he came to find a niche in the super competitive world of cloud computing services and found a startup that is succeeding with an innovative business model.
David, a computer engineer, after finishing his degree and after a couple of years working in Spain, went to the US as a systems and network engineer and worked as an IT systems and communications administrator.
On his return from the US, and with his background as a senior systems and network engineer, he founded Adder Solutions, a technology consulting and IT support services company, very focused on SMEs.
From Adder Solutions, to being founder and CEO of the startup JOTELULU. Why and how?
We invite you to see the Coffee with David Amorín, where he tells us about his career and why and how he came up with the idea of setting up JOTELULU and making the idea a successful reality:
Below, we summarize some keys to the success of JOTELULU that David has shared with us:
1.- Understanding the market you are targeting
Adder Solutions understood the real needs of SMEs. When they wanted to offer cloud computing services to their customers by relying on one of the big ones – Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud Platform – they realized the difficulties of offering cloud services to SMEs: it is difficult to sell, it is difficult to manage, it is expensive for the end customer and the margins for them were ridiculous.
On the other hand, SMEs have no or few human resources specialized in IT and usually rely on nearby and trusted IT SMEs.
Finally, SMEs have cloud computing service needs that are quite common to all of them.
2.- Finding your blue ocean
The blue ocean is a strategy where, by applying innovation, you find a part of the market that has not yet been exploited, and that generates an opportunity for profitable growth and gives you the competitive advantage of being the first: The opportunity that David found was in offering a service that was excellent in the shortcomings of the big ones and where the big ones were not willing to compete.
Large cloud computing providers focus on large companies and technology startups, i.e. organizations with highly trained technical profiles.
3.- Defining your business model
Having a clear idea of the market and what to offer, how do you offer it? In the case of JOTELULU, they decided that their client would be the IT SME that provides services to SMEs. That is, not to go to the end customer but to create a platform where small IT companies can offer cloud services to their customers. JOTELULU therefore decided to be a white label platform, where its customers put their logos and colors, customizing its offer of cloud services.
In this way, scalability is ensured through partners, who are the ones who provide the capillarity to reach thousands and thousands of SMEs.
4.- Seeking excellence in product and service
JOTELULU has created a radically different product in all functionalities: very focused on small IT companies and very simple to sell, to implement, to invoice: What David has called “360 simplicity“. ????
On the services side, they help partners throughout the lifecycle: from a price simulator and proposal configurator to technical support.
All this, focused on two fundamental axes:
1.- Very simple product, very good at what it does and very competitive in prices.
2.- Excellent support service, focused on the customer and with a lot of feedback: As David tells us, a 3Cs service: closeness, trust and affection.
In fact, JOTELULU has an NPS bordering on excellence: 9.73.
5.- Internationalizing
If Spain is a country of SMEs, Europe is a continent of SMEs, with almost 23 million of them.
So the idea is to consolidate in Spain and open a market in Portugal in January 2022, creating a service point for northern Europe in Amsterdam, so that they can serve the whole of Europe (from Amsterdam to the north and from Spain to the south).
Finally, a piece of advice from David to entrepreneurs
Embark on a project that solves a problem you’ve suffered from and that you understand very well. Look for the solution by going deeper and understanding very well the needs you want to cover. In that, there is no need to be in a hurry. If the solution you come up with is the right one, it’s time to accelerate and scale.
JOTELULU is a startup in which Venture Capital has a stake, a programme that was born from the collaboration between the Bankinter Innovation Foundation and the Bankinter Venture Capital team. Together, we identify and invest in high-potential startups with bank funding. Do you have a project? We want to help you!
