Helping Small Businesses Win the Contracts That Were Never Designed for Them
Founder of IT Custom Solution LLC, a certified Minority Business Enterprise serving government and enterprise, and builder of the GovBid AI product suite. A decade inside enterprise IT, then a firm and software built from the inside of a government contract. The operator's path into procurement, opened for the firms that follow.
Chief · Head
A prefix of high standing, prominence, and authority
Expands · Enlarges
To grow, to increase, to cause abundance to multiply
Prosperity, expanded
A name of increase, abundance, and high standing
In Yoruba tradition, a name is not decoration; it is declaration. A child is not named casually; the name is a covenant, a prophecy, a blueprint handed down at birth. Olufela was given to children born into families of prominence, or those marked for greater things, those upon whom abundance and increase had already been placed. The name does not describe who you are. It describes what was always meant to be.
That this name belongs to a man who would go on to build companies across multiple industries, operate in boardrooms from Nigeria to New York, and forge an enterprise reputation from nothing, feels less like coincidence and more like the oldest form of strategy: naming your child what you intend them to become.
My story doesn't begin in a server room, it begins in a boardroom my mother owned the room in. Raised across continents, educated internationally, and seasoned across more than ten cities, I've always been drawn to one thing: building from nothing. The instinct didn't come from a business school. It came from watching it lived.
Between entrepreneurial chapters, I spent years inside large corporations across multiple IT roles, not as an observer, but as a practitioner. Systems engineer, operations lead, infrastructure specialist, whatever the title, the approach was always the same: understand it from the inside out, then apply it somewhere it matters.
Every role, every industry, every city deposited something. That accumulated experience, the boardrooms I witnessed as a child, the corporate environments I earned my way into, the ventures I built from scratch, is the compound interest I now pour into every business I touch.
Accompanied his mother, a business operator across multiple industries, to board meetings from a very young age. Sitting beneath conference tables or waiting in reception while real decisions were being made overhead. The curriculum began before kindergarten.
An international education and the foundation for everything since: learning to see where disciplines overlap is itself a discipline.
Co-founded an internationally recognized leather goods brand with his brother. From a bedroom startup to Africa Fashion Week NYC within two years.
A decade embedded in large organizations, infrastructure, systems engineering, operations, and technical leadership. Hands-on. Real environments. Irreplaceable experience.
Co-founded an on-demand mobile car care platform serving New York, app-powered, doorstep-to-doorstep. Built and operated simultaneously alongside a full professional career.
Launched ITC independently. Built into a certified MBE firm serving government and enterprise clients, backed by every lesson from every prior chapter.
Running ITC, scaling GovBid AI, OpsTicket, OnboardIQ, and DeliverOps, pursuing federal contracts and product-market fit simultaneously. Still learning. Still hands-on.
Long before there were companies to run, there was a mother who ran rooms. She was the blueprint. A business operator whose reach spanned multiple industries that demand precision, negotiation, and an unwavering command of the room. She had all three.
From a very young age, the boardroom was a familiar place: not from across the table, but from beneath it. Sitting under conference tables while their mother commanded the room above, or waiting in the reception of buildings where decisions that moved industries were being made. Not understanding all of it yet. Understanding enough. Absorbing everything.
Navigating some of the most complex commercial sectors
The art of service, scale, and operational discipline
A 25+ year career that shaped two entrepreneurs
There's a certain kind of business education that no university offers. It happens earlier, in the back of a car on the way to a site visit, in a waiting room full of men in suits, in the particular way a person enters a room and makes the temperature change. That education started before formal schooling did.
An operator working across some of the most demanding, relationship-driven, and operationally complex industries of her era. She didn't just run businesses. She ran rooms. She ran negotiations. She ran the kind of long-horizon strategy that most people only read about in case studies.
The children didn't watch from a distance. They were present: in boardrooms, in waiting areas outside executive suites, absorbing the cadence of high-stakes conversation before they were old enough to fully parse it. The vocabulary came later. The instinct was already forming, the sense that business is fundamentally about people, preparation, and the confidence to hold a position under pressure.
That inheritance is not sentimental. It is structural. It shows up in how deals are approached, how rooms are entered, how complexity is navigated without panic. The fashion brand, the tech startup, the IT firm, the AI systems, the government contracts, they are all downstream of a woman who showed two small boys what it looked like to build something serious, decades before they had the language to describe what they were watching.
The best mentors don't always know they're teaching. Sometimes they're just living, and someone small enough to sit beneath the table is paying very close attention.
Entrepreneurship gets the headlines, but the foundation was built inside large organizations, in real enterprise environments, under real pressure, with real consequences. Those years weren't a detour from the entrepreneurial path. They were the curriculum.
Hands-on engineering inside enterprise environments, servers, networks, endpoints, and the full operational stack. The kind of experience that can't be simulated; it has to be lived at 2am when a critical system goes down.
Worked across security frameworks in corporate settings where compliance wasn't optional and data protection was non-negotiable. Built an instinct for risk that now lives in every ITC engagement.
Managed operational IT at scale, support structures, incident response, SLA management, and the discipline of keeping complex systems running reliably. The unsexy work that teaches you the most.
Navigated the enterprise shift to cloud infrastructure at a time when most organizations were still figuring it out, migration strategies, hybrid environments, and the organizational change that always accompanies them.
Sourced, evaluated, and managed vendor relationships for enterprise technology, a discipline that later became a direct asset when positioning ITC for government contracts and commercial procurement cycles.
Operated at the intersection of IT and business, translating technical constraints into business language, and business priorities into technical execution. The skill that makes everything else more valuable.
Corporate environments sharpened the technical edge. Entrepreneurship sharpened the strategic one. The result is a set of capabilities that don't exist in isolation, they compound.
Infrastructure design, systems administration, managed services, and IT operations leadership forged across corporate environments and entrepreneurial ventures alike. 24/7 monitoring, patch management, endpoint security, cloud backup.
SAM.gov registration, RFP response, MBE certification, an NMSDC application submitted in 2026. Built ITC from the ground up to compete and win across federal, state, local, and corporate procurement, backed by practical procurement experience from inside large organizations.
Building agent-assisted SaaS products for the government contracting market. Applying automation and structured AI workflows to give small businesses capabilities that were previously enterprise-only. Learning by doing, not by reading about it.
Translating market insight into shipped product. From architecture to deployment, React, Firebase, Cloudflare, Stripe live payments. OpsTicket built and running in production. The code is written, not delegated.
Shaped by international business education, real entrepreneurial experience, and years inside corporate structures where strategy meets execution. Fashion, automotive, hospitality, and technology across three continents.
A design discipline proven commercially at Alex Folzi informs how every brand, product, and communication is approached. Every venture since has carried that aesthetic intentionality forward.
One firm serving government and enterprise clients today, and a focused suite of software products built for the contractors coming up behind it. Services fund the mission. Software multiplies it.
A certified Minority Business Enterprise delivering cybersecurity, cloud, managed IT, software development, and staffing to government, education, and commercial clients. SAM.gov registered, MBE certified, with an 8(a) application submitted in 2026 under SBA review. Every engagement is backed by practitioner-grade expertise earned across a decade in the field.
Agent-assisted government bid discovery and proposal drafting. Starter from $49/mo · Pro $99/mo · Enterprise on request. Federal, state, and local contracting made accessible for small businesses.
trygovbidai.com →IT skills assessment platform, AI-generated scenario challenges, verified skill profiles, recruiter dashboards. Free tier · Pro from $39/mo billed annually.
tryopsticket.com →Contractor onboarding automation for government and enterprise. Structured workflows from offer to day one. Pricing on request.
tryonboardiq.com →Contract delivery operations management, milestones, invoicing, compliance documentation. Starter $99/mo · Pro $199/mo. Founding cohort rate available. Closing the loop after the win.
A professional IT skills assessment platform where candidates prove real capability through AI-generated, scenario-based challenges, not résumé keywords. Six specialization tracks. Verified skill profiles. Recruiter dashboards and candidate leaderboards. Built by someone who has worked in IT, hired for IT, and seen exactly where the pipeline breaks.
A project delivery platform built for government contractors, milestone tracking, deliverable management, client-facing portals, and compliance documentation in one place. Government contracts don't fail at the bid. They fail at delivery. DeliverOps fixes that.
Before enterprise IT took center stage, there were markets, customers, and products to move. These ventures built the entrepreneurial instincts no corporate career can manufacture.
A luxury leather goods and accessories brand co-founded with his brother Fola, born out of a bedroom startup and grown into an internationally recognized label. Premium vintage-inspired briefcases, suitcases, trunks, and satchels in vegetable-tanned leather at $144–$369, recognized in fashion press for vintage trunk craftsmanship.
Invited to Africa Fashion Week NYC 2011. Covered across three continents. The name fused both brothers: "Alex" from Fela's middle name Alexander, "Folzi" from Fola's high school nickname.
An on-demand mobile car care startup co-founded with Fola Fagbure, one of New York's early entries into app-driven auto services. Consumers booked car wash, detailing, repair, and maintenance via a mobile app with real-time scheduling and doorstep pickup and delivery. Operated alongside a full corporate career, the clearest evidence that the entrepreneurial drive never went dormant.
Baldwin, New York. 11–50 employees. Competed against RepairPal, CarDash, and Yoshi. Built, operated, and learned from.
A life well-lived isn't a footnote to a career, it's the fuel behind it. Every city moved to, every range session, every fairway walked, every late dinner in a city still being learned, they all end up in the work somehow.
Beyond the Work · 04
Three hours, three rooms, the day kept in its own time. Notes from a recent one, left mostly as they were.
Morning 05:30
Before the house stirs, a slow hour of mobility work and breath drills on a thin mat by the window. The body learns patience here, joint by joint, the kettlebell waiting in the corner for later, the coffee waiting longer still.
Afternoon 13:00
An unhurried round walked rather than carted, the bag light, the conversation lighter. Three clubs do most of the work; the rest exist for occasions. Wind off the water, the hush before a putt drops, a scorecard kept in pencil and never quite finalized.
Evening 21:00
A corner chair in a low-lit lounge, a Padrón already cut, a novel folded open at the spine. The room hums quietly: ice in a glass, someone laughing two tables over, the slow tick of a clock that does not insist. Phones stay in pockets.
Beyond the Work · 05
Six standing interests, kept lightly. What gets returned to, what gets read into, what shapes the rest.
Golf
A standing member at a public course that does not flatter. The sport teaches failure with composure: every round a lesson, every bogey a note. Most of the work happens between shots, in the walking, in deciding what to put down on the card.
Automotive
An older interest than any career. Engineering before badge, design language before brochure. European marques mostly, the ones that still believe in line and feel. A machine tells you what it is before you press anything, if you listen.
Travel · Living
More than ten cities across three continents, currently New York. Travel stopped being tourism a long time ago. Each place left something behind: a market instinct, a cultural ear, a way of reading a room that only comes from having lived in several.
Food · Fine Dining
A palate built on three continents and a bias that never moved. Nigerian cooking, suya especially, remains the line everything else is measured against. Japanese precision and Italian craft follow closely. A great steakhouse, when the occasion calls for one.
Fitness
Discipline in the gym predates the work. Weights, conditioning, the consistency of a routine that does not negotiate with a calendar. Full capacity is not a slogan; it is a maintenance schedule, kept whether anyone is watching or not.
Music · Culture
Afrobeats in the bloodstream: Fela Kuti, Burna Boy, the whole long line that runs through them. R&B and hip-hop after dark. Culture is the context underneath everything else here: the fashion, the food, the business, the identity. Nothing arrives without it.
Lived in 10+ cities across three continents, not as a tourist, but as a resident, an operator, a local. Each city deposited something different: a market instinct, a cultural reference point, a way of reading a room that only develops by having lived in many of them. Currently in New York.
Excellence in execution at every layer of the work
Cut through complexity to what actually matters
Build systems that multiply outcomes, not just effort
Cross-domain thinking as a competitive advantage
The work speaks first. These are the rooms where it gets discussed: stages, interviews, and a standing set of essays on how small firms actually get into government contracting.
Keynotes and workshops on small-business government contracting, practical procurement entry, and agent-assisted operations for small firms. Topics, session formats, and booking details.
Topics & Booking →Bios in every length, the founder timeline, talking points, and archival coverage from the Alex Folzi years. Everything a journalist or producer needs, in one place.
Media Kit →Essays from the operator's side of government contracting: what the paperwork actually means, where small firms lose, and how to enter the market without a lobbyist.
Read the Essays →Whether it's IT services, OpsTicket, government contracting, a partnership, or a compelling idea, I'm interested in conversations that go somewhere.
I respond to every serious inquiry within 48 hours.