Firstly, thanks to Digital Somerset for allowing us to share a brief snapshot of our Story here. Having moved from the South East to the South West 6 years ago this year, I’m certainly nowhere near considered ‘a local’. However, I’ve never felt more settled and at home here in the SW.
But enough about me, let me share a very brief summary of our story, and how the mission we set 20 years ago, still lives on today. Ask me what got me out of bed back when we started, and I’d give you the exact same answer as today – the opportunity to innovate on our own terms, change the world for the better. Yes, it may have a whiff of camembert, but that’s the true beating heart of my business. And if you do nothing else, you need to stay true to you to be happy.
When we started out, I had hair. That’s all gone however thanks to father’s genetics, seat of our pants stress, and all the other ups and downs of running a business. But you know what… I wouldn’t change a damn thing. ☺
To date, life’s been firmly lived on my own terms, and the desire to innovate has ultimately moulded me as a person. You see, I’m a fixer. Someone who goes looking for problems to solve in life. I’m also a frustrated creative (i.e. I can’t design for toffee, but I can fully visualise what I want). To me this has been a superpower, as it’s helped me think outside the box, and better communicate my vision to people who do have the ability create.
Anyway, I digress. We started out as a Social Media Marketing agency, even before the mighty Facebook came into our lives. To me, that represented innovation and allowed us the opportunity to work with incredible brands like Adidas and such like. There was literally NO competition.
We missed out on an early acquisition opportunity, because we had the desire to just kept building. It was exciting, as it is now.
Around 2012, we landed a Big Pharma client, launched the first medically licensed product (Sudocrem) on social media (a regulatory nightmare), and before long we were known as specialist. Growth steadied for a few years, likely because we were becoming less interested in social media (we started taking note of the negativity it created), and also we spotted the next tech revolution on the horizon, AI.
Being two founders who love a bit of ‘new and shiny’, we couldn’t help ourselves. We dived in head first and pivoted the business and all of its 15 years (at the time) of fantastic good will.
We knew it wouldn’t fail, and we were of course back to what felt like our exciting start up days, but this time with a few more grey hairs, a much more secure company, a network 100x the size in healthcare, and exactly the same desire to innovate.
Our business now looks like this, with a heavy focus on innovation:
- A service offering for grand scale AI, App and web projects
- An avatar technology we developed in Orbital, got funded and span out into its own vehicle
- An interactive video (2d & 360) technology we are delivering to multiple industries for the purpose of training and simulation.
You see, if we’d have stayed focussed on social media, and not invested in our own transition and innovation as a business, we’d be brown bread. The sheer volume of competition, the ever-depleting investment, the negativity aligned to social media, and the desire NOT to continue something we were really no longer enjoying have actually been our biggest motivators.
The learning – you’ve got to feel uncomfortable to grow, but you also need the desire to do so too. Luckily for me, my business partner and I remain hungry, and accountable to each other. Yes there have been some challenges along the road, but in large, we still have the same desire to innovate, and ensure life works for us, rather than the other way around.
If you want to see what we do, please visit www.orbitalglobalgroup.com, and www.virtturi.com.
Hayden Allen-Vercoe