Entrepreneur rides technology wave out of garage and into marketplace

Shelly Rounds doesn't gamble, but that doesn't mean she's averse to risk.

She and her husband, Dave, put $50,000 in savings, credit card charges and loans from family and friends on the line to establish UptimeLV, an information technology consulting firm, in 2001.

"That was our life in the beginning, bootstrapping a company out of our garage with three kids," the 43-year-old entrepreneur and chief executive officer said.

Rounds said her previous work experience with Body Wise International and Univit was helping small companies grow. In six years, UptimeLV has increased its revenue 200 percent, surpassing $2 million, and was awarded Innovative Business of the Year by the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce in 2006.

The company formed business alliances with Microsoft, Cisco, Dell, IBM and Hewlett-Packard.

Rounds, originally from California, said she saw an opportunity in Las Vegas to elevate business technology services to a level commensurate with other major U.S. cities.

As CEO, Rounds is responsible for overseeing every aspect of the business and supervising a staff of 10 people, including her husband, the chief technology officer, and Steve Flaherty, recently hired as president of the company.

"I'm not going to say my husband and I did it on our own," she said. "We got it to a point and we needed people who had more experience than us."

Question: What does your business do?

Answer: Technology services. We outsource information technology services, helping you support IT in place for larger projects. Systems design ... we do audits of their system and assess their needs. We do server maintenance.

Question: Why did you start the business?

Answer: Opportunity, the market in Las Vegas. My partner, my husband, loved the technology side and I loved the business side. Companies were bringing in help from out of state. Lots of small businesses were growing and need IT support and we had the skill and positioned ourselves in the marketplace.

Question: How much startup capital did you need and what were your expenses?

Answer: We bootstrapped it out of our garage, just my husband and I at the time that started the business. We borrowed $50,000 to support our life for six months or a year because we put everything back into the company. We had all our eggs in one basket, but we believed in ourselves. The trust we built with our customers ... we married customer service with IT.

Question: How did you grow the business?

Answer: Gaining more market share, expanding into other areas, mainly gaining market share. There's so much business in Las Vegas and every business needs technology service. If you have a good reputation, it's still a small town and word gets out. We sell servers. We work with Dell, Cisco, HP, Microsoft. We sell technology solutions for their company. We don't want to sell them something they throw out the door a year later.

Question: What brought you to Las Vegas in 1995?

Answer: I was a workaholic by nature. I love business and got to the point I need a break. I took my savings and traveled up to Washington to see family and friends and drove through Northern California to visit some old college friends and ended up here to visit my mom and met my husband two weeks after I moved here.

It was a great experience, single, no children. I was like a Gypsy.

I came to visit and met Dave. It was destiny. It would have been cheaper to just move from San Diego instead of putting my stuff in storage for six months.

Question: What are your strengths and weaknesses as a business owner?

Answer: My strength is my vision, the business aspect of where the customer fits in from the technology aspect. My husband brings experience in sales and technology, so we really build relationships and trust with the customer. We work with several different companies so we can give them top performance. I'm working with the marketing side of the business. I'm involved in a lot of organizations. I'm on the board for TBAN (Technology Business Alliance of Nevada).

Question: What about your weaknesses?

Answer: Patience. I think as a business owner, patience is a big one. I wanted to grow faster, bigger. I learned there's a time and place for everything. Sometimes a business just needs to be as big as it is today so it can settle in. Also, knowing what I don't know and bringing in people with expertise in areas I don't have like Steve (Flaherty) to take us past the level we took it to. A lot of people try to do it themselves and go out of business.

Question: Who are some of your all-time heroes?

Answer: I admire Bill Gates. He started out of his garage like we did. Michael Dell's another one. So I admire big companies that started in places where they had to have a vision because what they were looking at at that moment isn't what they were crating for the future.

Anybody that started in their garage had hardships, they had risk. You had to focus on the end in mind, because if you focus on the garage, you'll never get there.

Question: Why do people need your services?

Answer: Technology is in every business, especially now. Every business has a computer. Most businesses have servers, maybe up to 60 services.

The company may not be about technology, but it's how they get there. Businesses would not be successful without the technology to support that. We work with community banks, construction companies, certified public accountants, attorneys, city government.

We did a migration from one operating system to another for the city of Henderson. We can be the help desk for them.

Contact reporter Hubble Smith at hsmith@reviewjournal.com or (702) 383-0491.