It’s been a dozen years since Serge Amouzou came to the United States from his native Togo, settling in the Washington, D.C. area. He began trying out entrepreneurial concepts while still in high school.
“I quickly realized how much I enjoyed it,” Amouzou says. “I found that I’m motivated by working with customers and leading a team that I know can help achieve my vision.”
Amouzou launched his first full-fledged venture in 2009. That was SDA Designs, an IT firm that provided website, corporate branding and marketing solutions to small and mid-sized companies, with clients in the United States and France. Some of the solutions they provide are online, focusing on SEO options (similar to firms like Victorious), whilst others are more analog options.
Leaving SDA in 2014, Amouzou went to work for another DC-based firm, NanoTech Computer Consulting, as an IT consultant and the company’s webmaster. He oversaw web design and development projects for numerous corporate clients. During the same time, he became a founding partner of Vermeille Brand, a European-style clothing company that launched simultaneously in the U.S. and Germany. In addition to working with a former Hugo Boss designer to design Vermeille’s clothes, Amouzou worked with international suppliers to produce and deliver merchandise through distribution channel partners. In its first month of operation, the company sold 75 percent of the inventory it had on hand.
In 2015, Amouzou took on a project for the National Institutes of Health. He worked with the NIH web development team to develop and update the institute’s intranet and its public website. He also performed quantitative analysis of all media and public inquiries made through the NIH Clinical Center.
Amouzou came to Birmingham later that year, to participate in the Velocity Accelerator program at the city’s top business incubator, Innovation Depot. He was immediately impressed by the burgeoning entrepreneurial culture.
“I got introductions, made connections and developed relationships with mentors who helped open doors for me,” Amouzou recalls. “It was wonderful.”
The idea Amouzou brought to the accelerator program was what became his current company, Delect. A direct-to-consumer marketing platform for restaurants, Delect enables restaurants to run marketing operations, enable mobile payments, accept orders (for takeout, delivery or dining in) and book reservations. It also provides a mobile app that allows customers to make reservations, place orders, make mobile payments and earn points for rewards/loyalty programs. Some clients have reported revenue increases of as much as 25 percent since implementing Delect.
The success Delect has enjoyed thus far — some clients have reported revenue increases of as much as 25 percent since implementing the platform — has caused Amouzou to reflect on why he was drawn to entrepreneurship in the first place. Talking about that, he says there’s no doubt about the essential ingredients in the entrepreneurial stew.
“You have to love taking risks,” Amouzou says. “Along with the people you work with, you have to be enthusiastic about answering the question, How do we actually build something we all enjoy building?
“For me, one of the great things about Delect is that we had engineers quitting high-paying jobs to join us. That happened because we’re doing something that big players in the industry are not doing. We’re competing against a legacy system. That’s exciting.”
Meanwhile, Amouzou is so enamored of the entrepreneurial culture in Birmingham that he plans on making the city his home for the foreseeable future. He says that while he has “a sense that I’m still proving myself as a minority entrepreneur,” when it comes to the process of making the inroads necessary to attract local investors, “the landscape for how fast you can get there is changing” in Birmingham.
“In entrepreneurial culture,” says Amouzou, “we’re creating jobs people are excited about doing, creating ventures that they’re excited to be a part of. The presence of that kind of ecosystem does a lot to get people excited about where they live.
“That’s what’s starting to happen in Birmingham. And I’m glad to be a part of it.”
