Being a great admirer of Steve Jobs’ quote, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The Rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do,” Debra Rozier feels great relevance to it.
Always approaching things with a twist, Debra loves to question the approach, find ways to make a process better, color outside the lines a bit, and she never felt satisfied with the status quo. Debra says, “Every person that finally decides to start their own business usually begins with a catalyst moment or a series of moments that spark the desire to pursue the adventure. While each person’s journey up to this catalyst point is unique, I truly believe there are common threads in us that desire an alternative path in life other than the traditional 9 to 5.”
Debra became a successful woman entrepreneur because she challenged herself to become every sense of the entrepreneurial word; late nights, early mornings, liquidating assets and riding the waves of funding. Debra says, “It is extremely challenging not only to start a new company but also launch a brand new application in a market, simultaneously. Currently, most of our challenges are pretty mainstream both on the company and application side. I am trying to constantly balance growth with the demand to support that growth. What type of key personnel to hire that will fit into our company culture and how best to ensure our product road-map is on target with market trends.”
The Learning Phase
The initial market research was a key factor to Debra’s success in starting her own venture. She partnered with some key beta-clients, listened to the market needs and incorporated features and functionality that had absolute meaning. Debra says, “It was very important to me to go to market with a great product, not create great marketing around a poor product. We wanted to take our time and focus on getting the concept right because legal professions yearned for a solution. This approach to market has allowed us to secure some extremely high profile clients with multi-year contracts, shortly after our initial launch.”
Inovitech, Building Cloud-Computing Business Applications to Support Legal Professionals
As founder of Inovitech, Debra wanted to focus specifically on the legal domain needs first, but also design technology that can be utilized across markets. Inovitech is a product company, with a services component, that builds cutting-edge technology that specifically focuses on the cloud. Cloud technology offers flexibility in cost, accessibility and deployment. Inovitech has spent the last four years building their flag-ship product called IS-A-TASKTM .
IS-A-TASKTM is a dynamic workflow project management application designed to help alleviate the bottlenecks that occur with managing highly transactional projects. The core of IS-A-TASKTM offers tighter collaboration between those who manage projects and those who work on project tasks to completion. It is a highly configurable and collaborative application that centralizes all the aspects of managing a project between government, corporate law, law firm, and service providers.
Having Work-life Balance
Being an entrepreneur came naturally to Debra as she was always a worker and has always catered to the needs of others. She says, “My life was and still is a constant mixture of work-life leaning more towards the work, but owning my own business has allowed me to experience ‘life’ more in the purest sense. I was able to nurture an idea into a tangible product. I have the flexibility to travel to amazing places and I have connected with some extraordinary people that I may not have met if I was still working the traditional 9 to 5.”
In a reflection of the question ‘, what role do women play in the business?’, Debra says, “As I traveled down this path of entrepreneurship, I now understand why there are a lot of woman-owned business assistance out there. It is not easy to penetrate a market with new technology and not easy to raise capital. However I owe my present success to my career, partnering with key early adopters that believed in me and having a tenacious attitude to live and breathe this concept.”
Debra is satisfied with her career, she says, “As I reflect, the evolution of my career is something that I am very proud of. Sometimes you are so much in the grind that you do not realize the story board you have created, and quite honestly, I am not sure I would have done anything differently. I have learned a considerable amount from my prior work experience and I have met some amazing people along the way, both of which provided me the confidence needed to dive into entrepreneurship.”
