Who I Am and Why I Am Building This

There is a gap in business that nobody talks about. On one side, brilliant engineers who can build anything but cannot hold a meeting without interrupting everyone. On the other, business people who sell technology they do not understand. Very few people bridge both worlds. I have spent the last decade learning to stand in the middle.

My name is Axel Molist Cordina. I grew up in a small tourist town in Spain called Lloret de Mar. I built a recording studio as a teenager, sold suits to nightclub bouncers at sixteen, moved to the UK for university, and ended up building a telecoms company from nothing to over a hundred people and nearly twenty million in revenue. No outside investment. No playbook. No safety net for most of it.

This is who I am and what I am here to do.

The Break

In 2012, I was working at a telecoms company in Southampton. They sold on-premise phone systems - big boxes that plug into walls, hardware that needs a comms room. But their customers were dentist surgeries, car garages, small solicitor firms. These businesses did not have comms rooms. The phone system ended up under a desk or bolted to a wall on the way to the toilet.

The problem was simple. Leasing companies wanted hardware. More equipment meant more finance, more commission. So the company kept selling the wrong solution because it made the most money.

I believe in selling the right solution to the customer, even if it makes you less money.

I found the answer. Cloud-based phone systems. No hardware. No comms room. Just internet. In 2012, that was not mainstream, but the technology was clearly better for these small businesses.

I went to the owners and said we need to sell cloud. They said no. Cannot lease it. Will not make as much money.

So I started building my own company behind their backs. Website planning, supplier conversations, all while still employed. But one of the suppliers I approached told my employer. They called me on my way home. Come back to the office. We know about it. We are very hurt. You have to go.

I regret doing it that way. I should have been upfront. But if I had told them, they would have probably got me to run the new company with them as shareholders. And I needed to steer the ship myself.

So I was out. No job. No salary. No safety net.

But I had a DJ set on Tuesday night.

Building Between Tracks

I DJ'd three nights a week. Tuesday, Friday, Saturday. Eight till three in the morning. Four hundred and fifty quid a week. Enough for rent, food, and maybe a meal out once a month.

When the club was not busy, I had my laptop open behind the decks. Playing a track on Serato, switching to the browser to build the website, switching to Excel to build the quoting workbook, switching to Google Docs to write the terms and conditions. Then back to Serato to play the next song before anyone noticed.

During the day, I sat in my spare room. A desk, a laptop, and a phone. Two hundred cold calls a day. I am not a natural salesperson. I had to learn it. I downloaded every sales audiobook I could find and listened to them driving to appointments. I sold with enthusiasm and technical knowledge, and people responded to that more than any technique.

A friend called Dan Woodham let me use his office in exchange for consulting on his business. Having somewhere else to make calls from was valuable. Being in an office with other people dialling out, a busy environment - that is much better than cold-calling alone from your spare room every day.

Appointments turned into deals. I closed around two hundred in the first three and a half years. At the beginning, I did all the telemarketing, selling, installing, billing, and supporting. After some time, I started hiring people.

You Cannot Buy Talent. You Grow It.

The real challenge is scaling without a budget. Everyone says hire people better than you. That is great advice if you can afford them. People who are better than you normally come with a price tag you cannot afford when you are starting with scraps.

So here is what I learned. Hire people based on attitude. Determination. Intelligence. Willingness to learn. Can you work with them? Can they do a good job? If yes - hire them, train them, show them everything you know, and ask them to go learn further.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it does not. You identify when it does not and you move on. But sometimes you hit the jackpot.

Jordan, our Commercial Director, started with us as a telemarketer. He was meant to build a telemarketing team. Then he became a manager of managers. Now he is a board member. Katie started in customer service. Now she runs it and is right-hand to our Operations Director.

These people came in at entry level and grew with the company. That is the path when you are bootstrapped. You cannot buy talent. You grow it. And those early people - the ones who join because they believe in what you are trying to do - they are the ones who matter most. It becomes their business as much as yours.

The Gap Between Technology and Business

Through all of this, I started noticing something.

I have worked with brilliant engineers who cannot hold a meeting without interrupting everybody and not letting anyone finish their point. I have worked with business people who do not understand the technology they are selling - or do not know enough about technology to build a technology business. The owners of the company that sacked me would have kept selling the wrong solution forever if nobody technical had pushed back.

You also get founders who can build but cannot lead. Or founders who can lead but do not understand technology. The companies that succeed are the ones where someone in the founding team bridges that gap. Or somebody at a really senior level comes in early enough to be truly invested.

I sit at the intersection of technology and business. I can walk into a room of developers and understand exactly what they are telling me. I can also stand in front of a customer and explain why it matters. I have found that is not common. Most people are either on one side or the other.

That bridge is not a skill you acquire. It is a perspective you earn by doing every job in the company yourself. Telemarketing. Sales. Installations. Billing. Support. Hiring. Leading. Building software. Each one adds a layer of understanding that you cannot get from a book or a course.

What I Am Building Now

The company I built over the last decade is called circle.cloud. It is a telecoms solutions provider. We now employ over a hundred people. In 2019, I hired Graham - a great salesperson who pretty much single-handedly grew our turnover significantly that year. He is now circle.cloud's CEO. He runs the day-to-day.

I did that so I could focus on building software. We UC is a telecoms platform I am building with a team of twenty. From scratch. We are also building a suite of business productivity products around it. I believe in vertical integration - the more you control, the better the experience for the customer. I read the Steve Jobs biography, then Elon Musk's. Both obsessed with owning every part of the product. That really resonated with me.

But I will be honest. We UC is not where I want it to be yet. We have a long way to go. Is the product ready for market? Is it as good as I think it is, or is it just special to me? I do not have the answer yet.

But I keep building. Because the alternative is standing still or giving up. I do neither. My plan is not to sell these businesses. I want to make an impact over the long term with the technology and services we provide.

Why I Am Doing This

When we provide a solution to a customer and it genuinely improves their business - their efficiency, their bottom line, the way their team works - I get a feeling I find hard to describe. Something like satisfaction and determination and motivation all at once.

I want this content to create the same thing. If something I share helps you see a problem differently, or motivates you to take action, or helps your business run better - that is the whole point.

So why am I doing this personal brand thing? Same reason I am doing circle.cloud and We UC. To make an impact. Just in a different format. Through stories, through mistakes, through what I am working through right now.

This is for founders building from zero. Self-funded builders who chose the hard path. Technical people who can build but need to learn to lead. Business people who can sell but need to understand technology.

Creating software gives me the same feeling as when I used to make music as a kid. The same feeling as when we install a system that makes a customer's business run better. From making music to cold-calling contacts to building software to hiring a team of twenty to build more of it - the instinct has never changed.

See a problem. Create something to fix it.

That is the thread through everything I do. And that is what this content will be about.