Highly Commended at the Belfast Chamber Business Awards

Two Clouds was Highly Commended for Best New Business at the 2026 Belfast Chamber Business Awards, a little over a year after launching. A look back at the first year, and a thank you to the clients, Damien and Sofia who made it possible.

Friday night

On Friday 16 October, Two Clouds was Highly Commended in the Best New Business category at the 2026 Belfast Chamber Business Awards. In plain terms that's second place, and a little over a year after I started the business, it's something I'm genuinely proud of.

The awards are now in their eleventh year, run by Belfast Chamber in partnership with Bank of Ireland across 18 categories. The businesses shortlisted alongside us are doing great things across the city, so being in that room at all felt like a good marker of how far we've come in a short space of time.

A year in

When I started Two Clouds in September last year, the plan was fairly simple. After fifteen years building systems for other people, I wanted to run a service business that does careful, long-term work for its clients, rather than chase the build-a-unicorn route that a lot of our industry seems to measure itself against. Software a business relies on every day needs someone who'll still be looking after it in five years, and that's the work I wanted to be doing.

Early doors, running your own business is a lot of quiet work and a fair amount of wondering whether anyone will take a chance on you. There's no track record to point to and no case studies to show, and ultimately you're asking people to trust you with systems their business depends on. That doesn't change overnight, but it does change one client at a time.

The people behind it

The clients who said yes in that first year deserve the first thank you. They took a chance on a business with very little history, and the work we've done together is the reason we were shortlisted at all. I won't name them here, but they know who they are.

Damien joined us in the summer and has already made a real difference to what we can take on. Going from doing everything yourself to working closely with someone else is a bigger step than it sounds, and it's been going great.

Sofia has put up with my late nights and lost weekends more than anyone sees. Starting a business tends to take over the house as much as the calendar, and I couldn't have got through this first year without her.

Thanks, and next year

Thanks to Belfast Chamber for organising the awards, to Bank of Ireland UK for backing them, and to the Lord Mayor of Belfast, Councillor Róis-Máire Donnelly, for presenting the award on the night. Congratulations to everyone who was shortlisted, and to the winners.

We didn't take the top spot this time, which gives us something to aim for next year. In the meantime the work carries on as it was: building and looking after the systems our clients rely on, and making sure they're still doing the job years from now.