Husein Sharaf is not one to let the odds stack against him. By middle school, he started coding and building websites, leaving behind his “youthful” pursuits of rebuilding lawn mowers and vacuums.
He was a mere 18 years, with no college degree, when his work landed him a competitive job at Booz Allen Hamilton Inc. as a systems engineer, putting him elbow to elbow with colleagues twice his age. Before he turned 30, he’d launched his own cloud computing company, Cloudforce, back when many were still dismissing “the cloud” as Silicon Valley territory.
In a town where government contracting is the main game, Sharaf is going against the grain, pursuing commercial business and leaving the red tape to others. The strategy is resulting in an impressive customer base, including JBG Smith Properties, Hitt Contracting, and Host Hotels and Resorts, that pulled in $4 million in 2020 revenue and put Cloudforce on the radar of Inc. magazine’s fastest-growing companies in 2021.
Today,…
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