Many founders of fast-growing businesses set out with the most modest of intentions.
For example, Pierre Omidyar originally set up eBay as a vehicle for his wife to trade collectables called Pez candy dispensers. Omidyar had no inkling of what the site would become.
Adrian Portlock, whose Gloucestershire-based company Recipero has built an online database comprising the serial numbers of 100 million stolen goods, agrees that this is “often the way with businesses. If you see an opportunity based on providing a solution, that’s normally a good basis for a start-up.”
If you see an opportunity based on providing a solution, that’s normally a good basis for a start-up
One only has to look at some of the ridiculed inventions on Dragon’s Den to see the perils of trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist (what problem could have give rise to the ironing board that doubled as a piece of lounge furniture?).
Adrian, 50, set up his database, Check Mend, after an irksome experience highlighted a need for such a resource.
“I lost a phone on the Tube in London,” he recalls. “And when I went to the lost-property office they said ‘can you identify the phone?’ So I said ‘a Nokia 6310i.’ And they said ‘well, we’ve only had 35 of those today.’
“Then they wanted an IMEI number, the serial number of the phone. After much messing about my network gave it to me and I managed to get my phone back.
Eureka moment
“It then occurred to me that there was a market for keeping those details somewhere central, so if that if people lost any gizmos they could log in and find them more easily.
“So that’s how it started and it did really well.”
As is often the case, however, the role of the database changed after another eureka moment.
“People started telling us that they’d had something stolen or lost something, and would we update their account on the database? So it then occurred to us that the information that something had been stolen was actually more valuable than getting the registration in the first place.”
“It’s a very simple idea that’s grown into this pretty large system.
Proof surely that bad experiences need not be entirely valueless and that apparently trivial occurrences can have far-reaching implications. Who would have thought that, far from being a minor inconvenience, losing his phone would prove to be a defining moment for Adrian Portlock.
“It changed my life!” he says.
Restless
Via a HND in hotel management, Adrian’s previous career was in hospitality.
After cutting his teeth with a major hotel chain for two years, he opened the first of many hospitality businesses, a restaurant, aged just 23. That first business, an upmarket French brassiere, was then followed by several hotels and more restaurants.
After selling his chain of businesses in 2000 for a sum large enough for him to retire before 40, Adrian decided to take some time out. However, he soon became restless and was embarking on another venture before the year was out.
“It sounds great, but you can only mow the grass once a week before you get bored! So then I got interested in what we’re doing now.”
Adrian obviously didn’t need to approach any banks.
“I was very lucky. I had some cash of my own, but I had a business colleague who I’d known for a long time who introduced me to another guy who’d also sold his business.
“They both decided that my idea was quite interesting and became investors with me, bringing some experience and additional knowledge.”
The decision to invest was soon vindicated.
“We got into profit reasonably quickly. We had a five-year business plan with a view to breaking even in year three, which we did slightly before that.”
Similar services to Check Mend do exist for particular industries, such as cars and antiques, but Recipero’s database is unprecedented in terms of its enormous scope.
