The A-Z of launching a business

BY SIMON HAY AND JOE MATHEWSON

Sometimes businesses get started for the most every day reasons. In our case it was procrastination. We were both studying for our GCSEs and were happy to do anything other than revision.

It was 1999 and the Internet was really taking off. We were frustrated that we couldn’t access any school work online. During study leave we’d need to cycle back and forth to school to pick up printouts, revision advice and tests. Our bedrooms were in complete chaos with paper and revision notes everywhere. There’s no denying we were techie teenagers. We surveyed the mess, applied our teenage ingenuity, and thought it would be fun to write some software that could make the situation better.

At the same time, our physics teacher was an early evangelist for technology, so we created the first version of our platform with the physics department. From there, pupil power spread the word. By the time we started A-Levels our school was using it across all subjects and we were being called out of lessons to troubleshoot.

It was exciting to have made such a difference at our school, but we soon realised schools across the world faced similar challenges with technology.

By the time we left sixth form we had a handful of founding customers.

Even then, we didn’t see its full potential as a business. We went to university and travelled; Joe became a semi-pro DJ, and we took up jobs in the City. Our families probably thought we would settle down. But all the time we were working on the trading floor we had a second job running Firefly.

It was challenging. We’d be taking calls from schools in the middle of the day. These constraints forced us to produce a really strong product that was easy to use and reliable - and it reduced the calls.

When we secured our thirtieth school customer, we thought “right let’s do this”. It was a hugely important moment.

We were leaving well paid, enjoyable jobs to launch into the unknown. But we knew we had a product the market wanted.

Since then, Firefly has grown rapidly. We’ve raised £10 million in investment to support expansion into 40 countries and now have nearly 1.5 million students, teachers and parents using the platform.