In its Place

June 18, 2009

Allen Clary, chief executive officer and founder of Jibidee.com, has created an organizational tool for the home and office on his Web site.

In late 2007, Allen Clary approached his employer in Tampa about going to part-time to open a business.

His boss told him to chase his dreams.

“I’ve always been a sideline entrepreneur,” Clary says.

Not anymore. He is the founder and chief executive officer of Jibidee.com, a Web site that helps people electronically organize their home or business.

Clary, 38, an engineer by training, got the idea while trying to organize records and goals at home. Finding no software or professionally done Web sites to do it, he created it himself in his living room in Oldsmar.

“It was a light bulb moment,” Clary says. “My wife and I were frustrated because there was no tool to help someone be more organized. We had vacation ideas. Things I wanted my daughter to do. Goals in life. Savings goals.

Family contacts. So we built a home-grown system.”

After earning his MBA from the University of South Florida in 2003, Clary, a Jacksonville native, worked with a startup software company eventually acquired by Adobe in 2004. He then went to work for Tribridge in Tampa before launching Jibidee in September at the TechCrunch 50 Conference in San Francisco.

Clary invested thousands of his own funds and developed the design for Jibidee on his PC, then hired a group of programmers, some of whom worked for the Walt Disney Co. and Adobe, to bring it to life. A friend and equity investor’s $20,000 contribution to Jibidee helped get the design done and ready for launch.

While working on the company, Clary discovered something. He attracted more interest and help from vendors and investors when he committed to starting the company. When it was only in the idea phase, with no commitment, there was less interest.

After the first equity investor, another came to Clary, investing $30,000. The timing was right because Jibidee was burning through its startup capital.

“People won’t help you when you are on the sidelines,” he says. “If you jump out there, naked, people are drawn.”

The Web site has about 1,000 users. At the end of this month, it is updating the site with new functions, so it expects the users to grow. It wants to have 10,000 users by year’s end.

Revenue comes from two sources: advertising on the Web site and people that want special upgrades that cost a fee. The site is password protected. It has a five-man development team.

Less than a year old, the startup Jibidee is not profitable yet and has generated only a few hundred dollars in revenue. Yet, Clary sees more cash flow emerging as people and businesses learn about his site.

The name Jibidee is a nonsense word. The suggestion to use it came from his mom, after Clary did a name-the-company contest among family and friends. Clary bought the domain name for $8.

What is the biggest CEO lesson Clary learned? If you have supporting research and want to start a business, take immediate action, even if you don’t have all the resources in place.

“It forces you to survive,” he says. “It attracts investors. If you stay safe in an existing job or don’t put money in, it seems to just not work. In three to five years, we hope to be really big.”