In Four A Penny

Looking ahead at Clear Books in 2009

Tim — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 08:00:48 +0000

Clear Books is on the brink of success in 2009. In five months of full time development since I started in August 2008, we have a functioning accounting system that is already meeting the requirements of several businesses including Fubra. Our goal for 2009 is to officially launch the website and start marketing our application.

Clear Books has, in the main, been developed by one person working day and night in his flat. That person is me. Can a product developed by just one person take on accounting giants like Sage? I believe it can.

2009 is the year that my business, Clear Books, is going to succeed.

Tim Fouracre

1 Jan 2009

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

Update March 2012: We're not quite at the same level as Sage just yet, but over the past 3 years we have built an established and competitive company that continues to grow and go from strength to strength.

Clear Books is born

Tim — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 08:00:29 +0000

In early June 2008 I invited Brendan, who was still doing great things at Fubra, to visit Arbuthnot’s London office. I knew Brendan would be interested about how the IPO process worked.

Later that month I was talking online to Paul about Brendan’s visit. The conversation somehow got onto the topic of accounting systems. I had developed a simple online system based on the accounting principle of double entry which served my company’s needs (it was still ticking over in my spare time). Paul had developed an invoice driven system for his brothers’ business, Marble Construction. We discussed sharing each other’s code to combine the systems.

Paul, Brendan and Joe (Brendan’s dad and director at Fubra) were in London the next week and invited me out for lunch. I half suspected it might happen but even when it did it surprised me. They suggested I resign from Arbuthnot immediately and set up a joint venture with Fubra to develop an online accounting system. I knew straight away that I would agree and after ironing out the terms, I did.

I had joint control, I had equity and I was working with Paul and Brendan. Fubra had grown into a company with more than 20 employees, a formidable web presence including over 3 million subscribers to their portfolio of over 100 websites.

This was the big opportunity. I brought to the table accounting knowledge, competent development skills and most importantly the determination to make the venture work. Fubra brought support, a marketing outlet, development, hosting and design expertise. They also provided the financial security such that I could get by for the first year and focus fully on Clear Books.

On 2 July 2008 Clear Books Limited was incorporated and from August 2008, having worked my notice at Arbuthnot, I was able to dedicate my time exclusively to developing Clear Books.

(Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

Equity research at Arbuthnot

Tim — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 08:00:02 +0000

I have always been interested in the stock market from when I was 10 years old and profiting from dad’s BT shares to using my student loan to buy my own shares in Eidos at university.

At university the jobs I had been applying to, and constantly getting rejected from, were investment banking jobs. I still wanted the insight into how the financial markets worked and decided to apply for jobs as an equity research analyst. If none were forthcoming then I would focus on re-establishing my web development business.

Just as I had done when I was 18 and looking for a computing job, I found a list of boutique stock brokers and contacted them directly. It worked again and Arbuthnot Securities asked if I would come in and meet them. I got the job after six interviews, including one with the Head of Research in which he threw in a curve ball question, “What is the probability that two dogs in the UK will have the same number of hairs on their body?”

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

Chartered accountancy is the backup plan

Tim — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:42 +0000

I could program a bit and I had a mathematics degree, but I did not have a career I could fall back on if my new business venture failed. My company was doing well, but I was aware that it might not be sustainable. I was using tricks to get traffic from search engines; a loophole I knew would eventually be closed (it happened about two years later and many of my websites nosedived).

Luckily I anticipated this. Two things were clear to me: I wanted business knowledge to understand how to run and analyse a business properly and I wanted a skill to fall back on. After just over half a year working for myself I decided to apply to accountancy firms to train as a Chartered Accountant.

I accepted an offer from KPMG in Reading. The training contract would last three years and then I would officially be a Chartered Accountant with the skill set to run the finances of my business with a lifelong qualification to fall back on.

The Partner that gave me my job at KPMG emailed me when I announced I was leaving to say that he expected to see my name in lights one day. Perhaps he says that to everyone who leaves, but I am intending to prove him right.

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

Going it alone

Tim — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 08:00:10 +0000

A business will often spring up by copying what another business is doing. Or put more bluntly - some of the best ideas are copied.

I wanted to set up a website to sell the database I had created at college for mum’s theatre school. I wanted my own business and deep down I wanted to be the one in control and not just another employee. I asked if Fubra could help get my website idea hosted and set up. It never happened.

During an argument with Paul and Brendan over not helping with my idea I remember saying, "I could do what you do myself" to which the reply was, "no you couldn't, just try it".

So I did.

I incorporated a company to gain credibility, I bought a web hosting package, I registered domain names, I established online partnerships and I built several websites in my spare time. My company started making money too. Then Fubra stumbled upon a new competitor, me.

I left Fubra. My parting gift was to mould their new joiners’ process. Whereas before only one employee had ever signed an employment contract (at the employee’s request too), now everyone was required to sign a contract that precluded them from running a competing business.

Paul and Brendan understood my drive and they have both admitted that if the roles were reversed they would probably have done the same thing themselves.

Our paths would cross again.

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

First full time job at Fubra

Tim — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:00:04 +0000

At university I still kept in touch with Paul and Brendan who had set up www.fubra.com. They came up to Nottingham a couple of times to experience student life.

In my first year at Nottingham I had emailed Paul suggesting I should drop out of university and join Fubra. I am pretty sure he did not want that responsibility on his shoulders as he told me to stick at it until Fubra was doing better.

With no graduate career lined up in my final year, I arranged to start at Fubra as soon as I returned home from university in June 2003. At this time Fubra was beginning to really prosper and had a team of 6 full time employees, 2 summer students and 2 students from Holland on a placement year. It felt like a proper company. I was appointed their Technical Innovation Manager or TIM for short.

It was at Fubra that I learned how to program in PHP (the same programming language that Clear Books is written in).

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

Working hard to get a 2:1

Tim — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 08:00:18 +0000

By the end of my second year at University I was averaging 53.5% in my degree. In the beginning of my third year, as I started looking at careers, I quickly realised that I would need to average at least 60% to even get a look in at the investment bank graduate schemes I was interested in. It seemed every company required a minimum of a 2:1 before they would even interview you. Due to the weighting of modules in my final year I needed to average 64% in my final year exams.

Skipped lectures, missed tutorials and money making schemes did not seem so clever now. I made the decision to stop applying for jobs and focus on my degree. If I pulled it off I would apply for graduate jobs after university.

I began going to all my lectures, working in the library after tutorials and studying during the holidays. My final year was very much about hard work and it paid off.

In the end my final year mark was 69% bringing my overall average to 64%.

I had done it with a little room to spare.

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

It could be you

Tim — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 08:00:31 +0000

A professor at university convinced me of the merits of playing the National Lottery during a Game Theory lecture. The probability of choosing the winning combination and landing the jackpot is miniscule, however, the argument ran that if £1 per week does not impact your standard of living i.e. you will not miss £1 per week down the back of the sofa, then play the National Lottery to give yourself that slim chance of the big win. From time to time you will win a tenner or fifty pounds which will offset some of those lost pound coins.

I play by direct debit so that I do not have to remember to buy a ticket each week or even to check if I have won. It’s all automatic. I have not won more than £90, but nor am I missing that £1 each week and one day it could be me.

The same principle applies to premium bonds where the top prize is £1 million. Buy at least one premium bond for £100 to give yourself a chance of scooping the top prize. Plus with premium bonds you are entitled to your original investment back at any time.

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

Scheming at university

Tim — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 08:00:53 +0000

At university I found myself exploring ways to make money from short term opportunities.

Failed investment

I did not know the first thing about valuing companies or investing in them when I was at university. When my friend (another Tim) and I were looking through the business pages one weekend and saw that Eidos shares had hit a 52 week high of £4.00 but were now trading at £1.80, we were convinced that a chunk of our student loan would be well spent on Eidos shares. The share price would go back up and we would double our money as Eidos had the popular game Tomb Raider starring Lara Croft.

This was my first investment lesson. A company’s past performance is no guide to its future. The share price actually drifted lower until we eventually cut our losses.

£50 per referral

I had to sign up to an online stock broker, Comdirect (now Selftrade), to buy my shares in Eidos. As it happened, they had a promotional offer on at the time: If you referred a friend to the service, and that friend signed up and placed a trade, then both you and your friends' accounts would be credited with £50.

If I could get my housemates, university friends and course mates to all sign up, I could make £50 a pop. I had to persuade my referrals that as long as they placed one trade and bought a penny share then the cost to them would be the £12.50 trading fee plus the 1p penny share. From their £50 sign up bonus they could make a guaranteed £36.49 and could then go on to male their own referrals. It was a win-win for everybody.

The guaranteed bet

One of my housemates was a social gambler: fruit machines in the pub, the odd footy match prediction at the weekend, and then he stumbled upon online gambling. It was great for him as he did not have to leave the house to make his occasional “cheeky bet”.

It turned out that all the major betting websites were offering similar deals in which they would match your deposit of up to £50 if you bet the entire deposit. To me this was another guaranteed money earner.

If I deposited £50 and bet half on one snooker player winning and the other half on his opponent winning then I would get back my original £50 from the sign up offer and also my winnings from whichever snooker player won. A guaranteed profit. I did this on every gambling website I could find and even set up a second credit card registered at my university address so I could do some of them a second time.

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)

New information paradigms

Tim — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 08:00:08 +0000

I had a long summer ahead of me before the late September start at the University of Nottingham. There was no way I was going to spend it collecting trolleys at Sainsbury’s. I wanted a proper job. I thought about going to work with Paul and Brendan at Fubra, but they were not in a position to pay a salary and I needed to save up some money for university.

I picked up the Local Thompson business directory and took down the details of computing companies in my home village, Crowthorne. I drafted a CV and posted it to the seven or so companies I found.

A company called New Information Paradigms replied and invited me to their office for an interview. They offered me a job for the summer and I ended up returning to work for them for all of my Easter and summer holidays for the next three years. The initiative I showed started their student placement scheme.

(Written January 1st 2009. Republished from Tim's personal blog on startups & small businesses)