Page 32 - BusinessWest February 19, 2024

Delcie
Bean
CEO, Paragus Strategic I.T.
His Big Goals Promise a Big Impact for Employees, the Region, and Beyond
BY JOSEPH BEDNAR
[email protected]
elcie Bean had been repairing com- puters as a side gig from schoolwork from his early teens, and he was a high-school junior when he started taking his enterprise seriously, with
business cards and a company name: Vertical Horizons.
The name would change twice over the next two decades, first to Valley Computer Works, then to Paragus Strategic I.T. The technology would change quite a bit, too, as would his business model (more on that later).
What hasn’t changed is Bean’s initial goal: to know more than his clients.
“When I started, it was residential computer support. A lot of it was just helping senior citizens,” he recalled. “I was just helping people who were less sophisticated than I was set up a computer and learn how to use it.
“I didn’t actually know all that much. I just
had to know more than the person I was helping,” he continued. “I didn’t have a car; I didn’t have a license. So people had to come pick me up, bring me to their home, and I’d help them fix their computer. I got paid $10 an hour and fed very, very well; it was a lot of grandmas, so I got a lot of cookies and cakes and got invited to a lot of dinners.”
The company grew steadily over the next few years, first in a storefront in Amherst, then in a converted house on Route 9 in Hadley. By 2008 — still only 21 — Bean
had accomplished enough to be named to BusinessWest’s 40 Under Forty, one of the youngest-ever honorees. He also earned the publication’s Top Entrepreneur award for 2014 and its first-ever Alumni Achievement Award, given to high-performing 40 Under Forty alumni, in 2015 — both of those recognizing the impressive growth of what was now called Paragus Strategic I.T. and located in a larger building a half-mile east on Russell Street.
And now, Bean is a Difference Maker — not necessarily for the company’s still-upward trajectory when it comes to growth and expansion. No, it’s for the impact he’s had on
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BusinessWest
“We think we can be a $250 million company in 15 years.”