-I knew that I wanted to have a business in the education sector as... >
I knew that I wanted to have a business in the education sector as I’d worked in it before, but I didn’t have any idea about what we would actually do.
All I did was I went to colleges and just asked them, what do you want? We went to both senior managers and students. I remember sitting in a café in Darlington and said, if we were developing some software, what would help you in your studies? That ended up giving us the initial idea.
The best advice comes from the people you want to sell to. If a customer says, that’s a bad idea, it probably is. If they say it’s a good idea and you don’t think they’re simply humouring you, they look genuinely interested and start asking questions, then there’s a very good chance that you’re onto something.
After visiting potential clients, we then went out to see some people who could help us develop the software. We can do a lot of the development but we can’t do everything. I’m a big believer in sourcing things locally so I found a company in Newcastle who do websites and they really helped us to start up.
Part of developing a business is getting other people to understand what that business is and what you want to achieve. We’re very careful to work with people who understand what we want to do rather than just deliver what we asked them to deliver. There’s always changes taking place and being able to manage those changes effectively is a very good thing.
Keeping things local is probably cheaper too. It may not appear to be, but because there are so few problems with it because you’re able to manage things so much easier, it works out really well.
Our original concept was to develop software that would help students pass their exams. The reality is that we’ve developed software that develops their learning. Rather than just teaching kids how to answer exam questions, we’ve introduced things like video learning and have made extensive use of podcast technology. We have a lot of interactive online materials which students can do in their own time, away from school or college. They can then be more in charge of their own learning and they become engaged. If they’re engaged, they’re more likely to learn something, so we make our learning materials very appropriate for a young adult.
Jonathan WellsGuroo Ltd.
