Vadim VladimirskiyFounder

United States - Skokie, Illinois,

Like most tech nerds, I fell in love with IT as a kid. By the time I reached high school I was actually making money as an IT consultant. From then on I knew what I wanted to do: start an IT company capable of doing something that had never been done before.

But before I could stamp ‘Head Tech Nerd’ on my business cards, I needed to hit the books. First up was my bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Northwestern University, where I graduated magna cum laude. A couple of years after graduation I founded a cloud-based IT services company we called Adar IT.

It was 2005.

Growing Adar wasn’t a walk in the park. I was juggling work as an IT consultant, pursuing an MBA at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, raising a family, and trying to convince skeptical prospective clients to ditch their cumbersome in-house networking gear that they liked to keep in server closets for our stress-free virtual equivalent. You might say we were ahead of our time, because we were.

Once I had my MBA in hand (passed with distinction, thanks largely to the CEO of our household, otherwise known as my wife and mother of our four wonderful children) I turned full-time to bootstrapping Adar’s vision. I knew we were ready to revolutionize the way growing companies managed their IT—lowering their costs while delivering Fortune 500-level quality.

There was skepticism. I heard plenty of “No thanks” and “That’s not possible.” Except that I knew deep down that my innovative solutions were, in fact, possible. And that, with enough hard work and forward thinking, I’d make them a reality.

Ten years is a long time in technology. It catches up to your vision, as do growing businesses looking to stretch their IT dollar. I’m proud to report we’ve enjoyed year-over-year growth of 70 percent. Which is another way of saying we’ve turned “No thanks” and “That’s not possible” into the vastly preferable “Wow, how do you do that?” and “I get the idea—where do I sign?”