CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Thank you for reading along with the previous 53 chapters of this story.

The average novel contains 70-100,000 words, and with each of my chapters being at least 1,000 words, I’m well on my way, at least in volume terms.

Chapter 1 was published on 17th May 2024. I never thought when I started that I’d still be writing this story over a year later.

I’ve just re-read that first chapter, curious to know how I began. It still reads well, which is a good sign, as I constantly like to tinker, which doesn’t necessarily mean improve. I think the chapter has enough to encourage the reader’s return next week. It seemed to work.

Although we sold the company on that last snowy day in February, we were still invested because of the director’s loan notes. After ten-plus years, it’s also unlikely that we could completely switch off overnight without a second thought about what was going to happen next.

I certainly didn’t envy the pressing task for the remainers** to hit their 2018 target, or what changes might be imposed by the new owners.

The first significant piece of news was that Alistair was no longer the CEO and now reported to the newly promoted CEO, Geoffrey. I don’t think they ever bothered with a press release.

The second was the lack of sales growth, which became evident in the monthly reports we received. They were crawling along, picking up incremental business, but nothing substantial. Even the slow tick was being partially eroded by a strengthening churn rate***.

I naively thought we’d left them with the easiest route to goal with the new web app, which had been successfully implemented with Inchcape. All of the dealer groups would be wanting something similar, and CitNOW should have been guaranteed its share of those spoils.

It simply didn’t happen quickly enough in 2018.

Inchcape already had connectivity with all the advertising hubs they regularly used, but this wasn’t the case for many of the other early adopters. Instead, they discovered AutoTrader, the most crucial advertising portal for most dealers, was keen not to lose business, which meant connectivity was presumably not seen as a priority.

The third news item was Nick**** resigned after a few months, which must have come as a shock to no one. He was fed up with Alistair and our decision to sell the business. He wasn’t replaced. Instead, Alistair resumed the role.

When the remainers had to decide how much to personally invest in the new business, Nick low-balled it. If a minimum investment was required, Nick would have made a point of ticking that box.

The rest of 2018 was very different for us.

One of the first actions we took after selling the company was to clear all our debts. The mortgage was the obvious big one. It had felt scary to complete that transaction in Santander’s small provincial branch, not quite believing that the money had gone where it needed to go, until it was finally confirmed later.

Even the mortgage had been a bit of a novelty. We’d only managed to buy Chapman Close several years before, which finally ended a long time in rentals.

That purchase hadn’t been straightforward either, despite Santander lending the company millions. We were about to be turned down for the mortgage, just like the other banks we’d tried. It was only when the commercial side stepped in that the loan was finally granted.

We no longer had any ties to Wokingham, which meant we could move into London and Notting Hill, where we wanted to live.

We’d chosen Wokingham originally because it had good state schools for Georgie and Wills. It also put me closer to Bristol, a journey I made twice a week to see my children - Martha, Iona, and Fin. Although there was little money for a long time, the business afforded me another kind of freedom instead. I’ll always be grateful for that.

By the end of 2018, we’d moved into our mews house, sold Wokingham and enjoyed Christmas in a Chamonix chalet where we entertained family and friends. I’d also bought a sexy foldaway bike, which I used for commuting to Bristol for a while.

It had been quite a journey.

We’d also had plenty of time to get used to the company's failure to hit its target. I decided to assume that the director’s loan was effectively junk, and the chances of more cash were best forgotten about.

We received a quick lesson in how private equity firms generate profits in 2019 when they refinanced the business. Aside from paying off the Santander loan, they borrowed more and repaid much of the capital they’d used to buy the company with. Whatever happened next, they were essentially debt-free, with a nice business to boot.

Part of that process meant an unexpected windfall for us, as certain shares vested. After that, there was no official communication at all, and I returned to my original view - forget it, you’ve had whatever you were going to get.

What to do? We went about it very differently.

Donna spent the next four years obtaining a master’s degree in psychotherapy and is now a coach and mentor, working for several charities, as well as having her own business.

I decided to binge-watch all the TV series that I hadn’t had a chance to watch over the last ten years. Okay, not true, but I loved the idea that I could if I wanted to.

Instead, I play golf. I’ve always loved sport, especially playing it. Why was I surprised to discover so many new friends after joining a club? Quelle surprise - similar aged blokes with relatable stories.

I’ve kept a daily journal since 2017, and I stepped up my writing, adding this weekly newsletter and a mental commitment to write my memoir. There are numerous notes, and, of course, now this first stab at the CitNOW story.

My junk director’s loan turned out to be anything but. Tenzing, the PE house, had gone on a spending spree, buying up discounted automotive third-party suppliers, just like CitNOW, which they bundled into a re-packaged group and sold for a handsome profit.

The first we heard about the second sale was several weeks before it went through. We were staring into an estate agent’s window, looking at chalets we couldn’t afford. There was a request from new lawyers to confirm our identity.

It was my 64th birthday yesterday, a reminder that I need to get on with something. I’m now taking an extended break from this weekly newsletter to write a first draft of the memoir. I’ll be happy to start sharing the new chapters later this year.

Thank you once again for sticking with me.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**The remainers were the directors who reinvested in the business and continued to work at CitNOW.

***The churn rate is a reference to the number of dealers being lost at the end of their contract. As more competition enters the market, the threat of churn increases.

****Nick was the European Managing Director.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Snow was forecast for the last day of February, 2018. We were supposed to start at midday, but Tim, the more junior legal beagle, didn’t seem hopeful.

Just be somewhere local and wait for a call.

Platform 1, up to London, had been half empty. The premium paying commuters accustomed to a crowded carriage and the whiff of last night’s garlic were long gone.

The charming station announcer, well-known for entertaining his customers with extracts from Winnie the Pooh, was still on the platform. He was tightly wrapped in hat and scarf against the Arctic wind, with the promise of more to come.

There was no reciting.

The battleship grey steel benches remained empty, as the teenage mums opted to push their babies and the pensioners preferred to shuffle rather than sit. No one smiled when he announced that the 10.56 was only going to be a cheeky three minutes late.

We’d decided to take a mid-morning train from Wokingham. Perfect timing for a day out in London - shopping, late lunch, the theatre?

A smile must have slipped onto my face as my daydreaming gathered momentum. It hadn’t gone unnoticed.

What are you smiling about? asked Donna.

Oh, the thought of empty trains, late breakfasts and a desire to visit the Tate Modern, if there’s time, I replied, slightly disappointed that I’d been interrupted and found out. Perhaps it was still too soon for such musings?

The journey was uneventful. The blend of well-to-do lives leaving stations like Ascot and Virginia Water continued to jar with Feltham, the institutional home for young offenders, where several pushchairs departed before we were reunited with the comforting suburbs of Twickenham, Richmond, Mortlake, and Barnes.

It was all change at Waterloo.

We found a hotel on London Wall. It was close enough, and we could sit, drink coffee and wait for the call.

The sleet that started on the train had quickly blossomed into snow, softening the dystopian landscape of faceless offices hemming us in as we crabbed clumsily under our brolly blotched with sunflowers.

Every table in the overcrowded lobby was taken, mostly men in suits talking at each other or their phones. It helped to explain the fogged-up windows as we’d entered.

The opportunity to network appeared to have easily overcome any concerns with the weather, a pricey menu and the snail-paced service.

We were shoehorned into a line of crowded tables with just enough room for one person on either side. It could easily have been mistaken for a speed dating event. Some tables were doing well, others barely talking, and a few were already back on their phones.

We looked blankly at one another, on our low, tangerine-coloured stools, presumably designed for hotel efficiency rather than comfort. We said little; the silence welcome, unlike a date, where the lack of engagement screams at the futility of it ever becoming anything other than something not to be repeated. Ever.

We’d talked too much about this day already. Are we finally doing this, or was something else lurking, a final twist in the tale? Another postponement while something had to be mulled over once again. Don’t worry, Tim would say, a simple rearrangement in the diary for a day, maybe two. Or something more gut-wrenching, a postponement with no new date that drags on to the point where it can’t be called a postponement any longer.

What would Mum and Dad have made of it all?

I can’t remember when I started calling them every day. Probably when I always seemed to be driving. They’d grab a phone and the extension, keen to talk and catch up on the latest since yesterday.

Then it was only Mum.

I would have explained our wait today while she listened patiently. Few questions would have followed, not through lack of interest, but because logic dictated. As a retired maths teacher, she wouldn’t have wanted to know why selling a company might be complicated.

Unlike some, age had finally softened her. As sharp as ever, but now much happier to live in the moment and forgive the flaws and weaknesses of her children, friends and god. She knew her time was nearly up, and she chose to live what was left differently.

The call came late, after the rush had gone. The suits having vanished to their ergonomically designed high chairs to once again stare at their monitors.

At the lawyers' office, we were ushered into a presentation suite with a large U-shaped table that could comfortably seat thirty. It was littered with columns of paper and people moving back and forth, bringing more. We spent the next hour slowly moving in an anticlockwise direction, signing repeatedly. We could have opted out, giving our authority to someone else, but where’s the fun in that? We wanted to experience every tedious last moment.

The lawyers popped a few bottles of champagne with the new owners when we were done. We felt like gatecrashers at our own party, except it wasn’t our party anymore. We didn’t stay long.

Outside the tall revolving doors of the lawyer’s office, the darkening sky was crystal clear, the fallen snow still muffling the busy hum of the city. We stared upwards, lost in thought, aware that it was now done.

The freezing conditions reminded us it was time to go. We reached for each other’s hand and held on tight. It was partly to stop ourselves from falling and mostly because we still couldn’t quite believe that we’d only gone and sold our company.

We laughed at the complete lack of taxis. Which way now?

We walked away from the footsteps and took the path less trodden.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

By the time January came around, we continued to believe that Tenzing was wrapping up the formalities. Two individuals were responsible for managing the due diligence. Their team had found no material issues that might impact the sale.

I knew Nick** had been very forthright in his interview about achieving the projected 2018 European sales target. He didn’t think it was possible, and hadn’t sugar-coated his response when asked.

I’m sure this would also have been countered by Gordon*** and Alistair. Either way, Nick’s honest opinion didn’t seem to have derailed anything, and the process continued.

Tenzing finally announced that they were done and very happy to proceed with the sale. There was just one more formality which needed to be undertaken. It was something they did with every potential purchase, and the paperwork for the sale wouldn’t be started until the company passed this final test.

The team that’d been working on the sale now stood aside. Enter stage left, a group of seasoned business professionals, with no prior knowledge of CitNOW, who were given all the relevant information and asked a simple question: Would you pay £30 million for this company?

After a day’s deliberation, their answer was unequivocal. No, not as it stands.

Their reasoning was clear. They were struggling to believe that the company would comfortably exceed the £1 million recurring monthly revenue, on which the sale price was based. It was clear from the monthly returns for the last quarter of 2017, at least, that CitNOW had plateaued.

I don’t remember the exact figures now, but the company was around £60,000 short of where it ought to have been. Their concern wasn’t that the £1 million wouldn’t be reached by some point in 2018. It was the lack of evidence for continued solid growth and the fact that the company was now playing catch-up.

Tenzing was being asked to acquire a company based on a projected £12 million plus annual revenue in January 2018. In other words, January’s recurring revenue should have been at least £1 million, February a bit more, and so on.

I’m sure Alistair and Geoffrey argued that their sales forecast was realistic and very achievable when they were asked to attend a final do-or-die meeting. Nevertheless, it didn’t change the facts of the situation. January’s figures were not going to be any better than November’s or December’s, give or take a few quid. When and where was the slack going to come from?

Tenzing still wanted to buy the company, but now felt that they needed to find a way to protect themselves on the nominally agreed price.

They’d never really queried the original asking price until now, which was smart in hindsight. They obviously needed to like CitNOW enough to enter into a process, but they didn’t begin, as some had done, with any concerns about overvaluation.

A final offer from Tenzing was presented to Alistair and Geoffrey, which was also communicated back to us. After the offer was digested by all concerned, a final meeting several weeks later was called in KPMG’s London office. The leavers were corralled in one office with Hamish****, the remainers in another with the KPMG team trying to get the deal over the line.

The offer in principle was a simple sales target, predicated on an agreed sales price of £30 million, of which £6 million was wrapped up in director’s loan notes. These would pay out on a sliding scale based on a recurring monthly run rate over three consecutive months between £1.1 and £1.2 million. Failure to achieve £1.1 million meant the company was effectively sold for £24 million.

The timeframe was 2018, which meant the last meaningful month to achieve the target was October. Whatever monthly revenue had been achieved by then would almost certainly be reflected through to the end of the year.

It was a deal which made sense to the remainers. It gave Alistair a chance to prove that the sales forecast was entirely achievable, and they would comfortably surpass the £1.2 million monthly target, well in advance of October.

It made less sense to the leavers for one simple reason. We were leaving the company at the point of sale and would have no influence on achieving the new sales target, and consequently, the company's final sales price.

Hamish made sure that this point stuck and offered a nuanced alternative to the remainers. The leavers would only accept half of the downside risk. It meant the remainers would have to sacrifice some of their payout as security to the leavers in the event of an unexpected failure.

Whilst neither side wanted to see the deal fail, and the thought of carrying on with no sale was pretty hideous, it appeared that the need to sell was more pressing for those staying. Hamish’s deal was accepted.

If they’d said no, we would have had to put our exit on hold and continue. Realistically, it probably meant another two years.

Was it a tough pill to swallow for those staying? Probably more so when they missed their new target by a considerable margin, barely scraping past £1 million per month by the end of 2018.

Nick and the old guard at Tenzing had been right.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Nick was our European Managing Director.

*** Gordon was our Sales Director.

****Hamish Morrison is the Joint CEO of BHP. At the time, he was the managing partner at BHP, responsible for specialist corporate finance.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

The due diligence that KPMG undertook also included meeting Donna and me. By then, they had a good understanding of the business, had met Alistair, Claudia** and Geoffrey*** frequently, and had a handle on our technology from Colin and Michael****.

We were one of those final stones which needed to be turned - a final check, despite everything that would have already been shared. The real secret sauce in the company wasn’t about to walk out the door.

No one need have worried.

I expect Alistair was also vaguely respectful for once. He didn’t want to rock the boat any more than we did. It was important to present a united front, and we were never asked about his suitability.

KPMG had seen it all before anyway and would have formed their own opinion as to how the company ought to be pitched and whether there were weaknesses which needed addressing. It was also standard practice to downplay any leavers because they weren’t going to be part of the new company when it was sold.

In the prospectus, we were part of the existing structure, marked as leavers. I’m sure in conversation, we were the founders of a rapidly expanding, successful company which had now outgrown us. The real stars of the show were the remaining shareholders, which is precisely as it needed to be.

It was business as usual while KPMG fished their networks in the UK and the US primarily. There was a deadline by which potential investors needed to show interest. I think five soon became three, after they’d all done their initial due diligence.

It’s an interesting exercise because it’s not only about finding a potential buyer, prepared to pay the asking price (or make an offer), but also whether the remaining shareholders think the buyer is going to be a good fit. On the other hand, the leaving shareholders have far less interest in the buyer and are more likely to favour the highest bidder.

In our case, there were only private equity companies interested, so any trade sale was immediately off the table. That might have been concerning for at least one person, because CEO turnover is exceptionally high with these buyers. Nearly 60% are replaced within two years.

Of the three potential investors left, one quickly disappeared due to their unrealistic expectations regarding control and its implications. Of the other two, Tenzing appeared to be the best fit for the remainers, and they were still talking about a £30m valuation. It seemed that everyone’s expectations might be met if Tenzing were still interested once all their due diligence had been completed.

When Geoffrey asked for an extraordinary fee of £50k on top of his usual one for continuing to manage the company sale, in our now infrequent meetings, the leavers flatly refused. Angela pointed out that whilst he might have been working hard for the remainers, there had been zero communication with the leavers. It felt like we’d become the leper colony on the island, an irritating adjunct, which couldn’t entirely be ignored.

I’m not sure why he thought this was appropriate behaviour. We knew the remainers, especially Alistair and Claudia, were working hard. But it seemed naive to disown us, given that the deal was still far from done. Perhaps Geoffrey’s lazy gene streak was getting the better of him?

He argued that he’d also been working hard on our behalf. Given the lack of evidence, we suggested that he should contact Tenzing to request his bonus for all his hard work on a successful completion.

Relationships were more strained than usual during this period, and the lack of communication didn’t help. Alistair was determined to try and get the deal done by Christmas 2017, even though KPMG was already using rhetoric like, it’s going to be very tight, in the November. He planned to use the Christmas party in December as a time to announce the purchase by Tenzing.

The format was usually that everyone gathered for lunch at the chosen location before we had an afternoon of business presentations. These were never too arduous, and we tried to make them as entertaining as possible before the evening dinner and DJ for those who felt so inclined.

I’d organised everyone except for this one. Each year, it was slowly getting bigger, with a bit more in the budget to accommodate everyone as comfortably as possible.

I felt particularly proud as I entered the auditorium for the afternoon presentations this time. We now looked a lot like one of the many automotive conferences I’d attended in the past. There were maybe 120 CitNOW staff already sitting there, waiting for the festivities to begin.

We’d asked to be seated in the crowd of tables with our staff, rather than be conspicuously awkward at the front. I noticed that the two Tenzing representatives had done precisely the same, merging in with staff at another table, perhaps wondering about Alistair’s presentation and what he might say. They disappeared after the first tea break, and we didn’t get a chance to talk to them.

Alistair opened proceedings.

The slide in the presentation about Tenzing was still there, but the announcement was blurred out. He made one or two jokes about worse kept secrets, but the reality was, the deal still hadn’t been done. I couldn’t blame him for saying that it was just down to formalities, because that’s what we’d all been led to believe at the time.

Alistair had been kind enough to ask me whether I wanted to speak when the agenda was being put together. I dearly wanted to, but I declined because I thought it was more important that everyone looked forward, not back. The future would hopefully not involve Donna or me, so anything I said would at best be counterproductive.

However, if I’d known that Geoffrey wasn’t going to make any effort at all, I would have taken up the invitation and opportunity to have one last whirl.

Instead, we had to listen to an old Sytner presentation that he’d dug out, extolling the virtues of going the extra mile for customers and never taking them for granted. At one point, he appeared to be telling everyone off, remarking that we could all do better. Had he forgotten that CitNOW was a B2B company and not a retailer? Did he care? It also didn’t make sense. Our customer support was always fantastic.

The new year came and went. Progress was still being made toward a satisfactory conclusion when Tenzing introduced a new dimension to proceedings in the third week of January.

They played an absolute blinder.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Claudia was our second Financial Director when we sold.

***Geoffrey was our non-executive Chairman.

****Colin and Michael were the two remaining technical shareholders in Stirling.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Inchcape became our swan song. We had added another first with a revitalised fee-paying web app, where the focus was very much on still images rather than video, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.

There was a bit of huffing and puffing from Stirling, but it was an impossible development to ignore. Inchcape was one of our best clients, who now wanted to discuss the improved functionality of our web app with a group of their senior managers at their head office in Milton Keynes.

I couldn’t blame Colin** and the development team for not immediately jumping for joy. There had been too many previous ultimatums with tight timeframes and the promise of big orders, which vanished like Scotch mist when it was finally time for the customer to sign up. The long hours and extra sprints*** to meet the requirements had too often been worth a big fat zero.

This was very different. The business case was maths any child could understand. The cost of our improved app to Inchcape was less than they were paying for photographers, plus there was the big bonus of stock being on sale, sometimes days or weeks in advance.

The entire project, from start to finish (at least for a deployable version 1), was completed in under three months, including a pilot.

A lot of time was spent defining how the images should be taken, with wireframes added to provide clear guidelines for the user at the dealership. The most valuable part of the project for CitNOW was the integration with Inchcape’s image-handling server, because it made our app sticky.

It meant that uploaded images from the app in any Inchcape dealership would be available across a myriad of different websites. Notably, it included AutoTrader, the UK’s number one motoring advertising portal.

AutoTrader’s pricing reminded me a lot of ITV’s approach to selling TV advertising spots before digital seriously dented their wheels. They were also in a near-monopoly position, which had made them greedy, arrogant, and unpopular with the dealer networks (advertisers) they served.

I’ve always wondered how the conversation went when Inchcape informed their AutoTrader account director about the changes they were about to make. I want to think it was a passing comment as their regular meeting was coming to a close.

Oh, and one more thing. No more photographers from next month. Thank you.

It was a significant contract to cancel and one that rang the death knell for a whole way of doing business for the industry.

It wasn’t as if AutoTrader could be obstructive or difficult at that point either. Inchcape remained an excellent client, continuing to spend on classified advertising, even if they had just given them a bloody nose.

The stickiness I’ve just mentioned was strategically really important for CitNOW. While the Sales and Workshop apps were performing well, neither was essential to the dealership's operation. But an app that was used for image origination, populated through our servers and then distributed seamlessly online to create customer enquiries was golden.

The more integrated we were with the dealer’s business, the more difficult it was for competitors to remove us, which in turn made the company more valuable.

The other notable loose end I picked up was MAN*****. Their UK head office was in Swindon, and they had an obvious problem that video could help resolve. HGV truck inspections, often referred to as the 6-weekly inspection, are a legal requirement for commercial goods vehicle operators.

It means that MAN-qualified technicians are constantly undertaking a massive ongoing volume of work. They wanted to devise a semi-automated programme, which guided the technicians, step-by-step and could also be used to record every inspection.

Honeywell were holding them to ransom at the time, having already developed a proven service. We’d already started doing a bit of business with MAN on their rental returns, but I couldn’t persuade the CitNOW board to focus on this colossal project.

We’d become a lot more sensitive to off-piste distractions, having spent too much valuable time chasing boatyards, campsites, lift manufacturers, even the gas industry. I still believe the HGV industry is aligned closely enough with CitNOW’s core market to be feasible.

Is there a gold nugget, still sitting there, waiting to be discovered?

The process of selling the company began when the board approved the appointment of KPMG. It wasn’t quite as simple as saying, Hey, you nice chaps over there in the suits, please sell our company. They first did some due diligence to convince themselves that we were worthy of their time and effort. It was essential security on their part because the deal is almost entirely back-end weighted. Only when a sale is successfully concluded would they get their payout.

In our case, like many, we had shareholders who wanted to leave - me, Donna, Angela, and Berrie - and those who wanted to stay - Colin, Michael, and Alistair. We also had two thoroughly pissed off board members with share options - Gordon and Nick^, who wanted to postpone any sale entirely.

If we had been a more joined-up group of shareholders with the right CEO, their wish might have been granted. The business was fundamentally a good one, but there was now a push to sell, even if that meant being premature.

It was a decision that would cost us all. Ironically, the biggest loser would be Alistair.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Colin was our Chief Technology Officer.

***Sprints - a term often used in product development teams. It’s typically a timeframe of 1-4 weeks where a team works collaboratively to deliver a shippable product.

****ITV - is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network, which missed the digital boat and has been playing catch-up ever since.

*****MAN - Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg, a German manufacturer of commercial vehicles, diesel engines, and gear systems.

^ Gordon and Nick - Gordon was CitNOW’s Sales Director, Nick was Managing Director, Europe.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

It was Ken** who reintroduced me to James over an early supper in London’s West End. They knew each other well because of their Inchcape connection.

Inchcape was already a good client of ours, initially, due to their BMW dealer network. But over time, we had gradually expanded into their other premium-branded networks, including JLR*** and Mercedes-Benz, which they partly represented, along with other groups in the UK.

I’d briefly met James before when Alistair had pounced after he’d left Stratstone and had been in between roles. Nothing in particular happened as a result. He’d just bought a day’s consultancy to chew the fat.

Alistair spent the day driving James around, leveraging the opportunity with introductions to one or two of our clients who would have been interested in a high-level catch-up. Between the meetings, he would have been probing James about his next move and exploring any possible opportunities for a CitNOW introduction, where we were struggling. Pendragon, which owned Stratstone, also owned other groups, including Evans Halshaw, where we’d been shut out for years.

The early evening meeting was enjoyable and efficient. Ken had called in a favour, and I certainly wasn’t about to compromise his position with some overzealous sales patter. I’d never been a big fan of the dog with a bone approach. Given that it was rare to meet someone quite so senior, I was more interested in listening to what James had to say.

He knew exactly how such events ought to be conducted and observed the adage that there was no such thing as a free lunch. We arrived on the topic of automotive video a few minutes before he needed to leave to catch his train back to the Midlands. It was more than enough time to discuss any possible thoughts he might have, what I could add, and any next actions.

It turned out that he was quite a fan of the technology, recounting an early skirmish that he’d had with Autos On Show when he was running Stratstone, another premium-branded network of dealers including Aston Martin and Ferrari.

I was keen to explore web video for their used car stock lists, and he was surprisingly well informed about the benefits. Like most people in his position, he wasn’t looking to add me to his Rolodex, but he was keen enough to open a door or two so I might have an opportunity to continue the discussion with an appropriate senior manager at Inchcape.

This is what ultimately led to a meeting with Claire at Inchcape’s Volkswagen dealership in Telford at 09:00 on a bright, crisp Tuesday morning, one autumn. She was deeply embroiled in dealer marketing, making her perfect for a discussion about the addition of video to the 20 images that every used car displayed on their various websites.

Used vehicles were always displayed with images. They had to be. Otherwise, potential web browsing customers would ignore the vehicle in question, moving immediately on to the next in their search. It had been like this for a long time.

We already had a web video application with the ability to provide a half dozen stills. It was unloved and barely used, so I wasn’t even thinking about still images when I arrived. I thought Inchcape might like the web video part, picking up on the conversation I’d had with James months earlier.

At some point during the conversation, we’d got onto the process of how, and I’d suggested that the dealer’s sales team should be tasked with making the videos. The benefit was instant access to new content on any day of the week, whenever stock arrived. There was no reason why it couldn’t be on their website and therefore on sale almost immediately.

It was Claire’s throwaway comment, however, which caught my attention.

It would certainly be a lot better than the two weeks it takes for some of our BMW stock to appear online.

What?

Can you walk me through how that happens?

AutoTrader had dozens of freelance photographers all over the country whose job it was to take professional photos of the new (used car) stock when it arrived. But they only visited a dealer once a week. Everything on their digital drives was downloaded at night, sometimes the following morning.

If stock arrived on the day the photographer was there, it was either perfect timing or the dealership had to wait a week for their next visit. But with BMW, photos couldn’t be used until the background was also replaced with a more aspirational setting, which added even more time to the process.

I, like everyone else, assumed that AutoTrader had the market pretty much stitched up, along with their used car website for display advertising. It wasn’t in their interest to change anything, even though camera advances on phones could provide a pretty good alternative to professional photography, especially if the images were only going to be displayed on a website.

Every day, a vehicle wasn’t for sale was costing the dealer money. For an operation the size of Inchcape, this was significant. Then add to this the cost of image creation and manipulation. To meet the agreed standard, there was a weekly photographer and another third-party provider to change twenty backgrounds for every vehicle.

It was nothing new. Every manufacturer had an image standard to which the franchised dealers subscribed.

What was new was considering a new, improved version of our web app, which would be added alongside the existing CitNOW Sales app already used in every Inchcape retailer. It would immediately give every dealer more control over the process, and stock would no longer sit idle waiting for the photographer.

I was reminded of the words that Steve, our former Finance Director, had uttered when we were sitting in our shared office one morning, frustrated that Alistair was in Japan and not next door.

There has to be gold in some of the hills much closer to home.

Warrington, where Alistair lived, to Telford via the A49 is 61 miles, give or take a tenth of a mile.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Ken was a senior industry marketer who had worked for Hyundai, the RAC and then Inchape. He’d helped me a lot when we’d been struggling with our cost base, unsupported by the significant sales growth required.

***JLR - Jaguar LandRover

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Alistair wasn’t happy. He presumably expected everyone to go all gooey-eyed over the Ford deal he’d negotiated. That didn’t happen.

I use the term negotiated loosely because the base price was lower than it should have been. A coach and horses had been run through our price list, and it came lavishly garnished with caveats.

Why not leave it to the Sales Director to do the job he was paid to do? Gordon had plenty of experience and deals aplenty. He was even known to have had the occasional nightmare about needlessly heavy discounting. Instead, he’d been relegated to a bystander at the fateful meeting.

Complex pricing negotiations were nothing new to the business. However, it was disrupting our transition to Salesforce as part of our future-proofing efforts, with the expectation that we might earn a few brownie points when the due diligence process began.

In the meantime, the inputted price and sales data now resembled a Swiss cheese, because the rules around discounting — the same rules that the rule breakers had created — had been torn up into a hundred pieces.

This deal was different, was a regular excuse. It meant the order couldn’t be processed under the rules-based system that Salesforce represented, and others, including Donna and her team, had to try to sort it out. Otherwise, invoices couldn’t be generated.

It wasn’t the first company where I’d witnessed poor sales discipline. It was often accompanied by unruly salespeople strutting around like peacocks when they brought in a new order. This was, of course, the only thing that mattered. They somehow felt safely elevated to an almost untouchable position. Any issues with their discounting nonsense, a small incidental, could be resolved by someone who hadn’t been honoured with a company car and certainly couldn’t afford two weeks in Tenerife every year.

Perhaps it’s all changed now? What hasn’t is dropping your draws to win an order. It’s still a sign of weakness and illustrates a profound lack of skill. It means they don’t know what to do when a buyer raises an objection. Every buyer says no; they ought to because they’re trained to get a good deal, which doesn’t necessarily mean the lowest price possible.

In my youth, when I sold Duracell batteries to Asda Non-Food Managers, I was dealing with highly motivated people who had been on courses entitled, How to Say No to Salespeople. We weren’t even allowed to negotiate the price. High street salespeople were not entrusted with such responsibility. Instead, we debated planograms and additional manufacturer stands.

I wasn’t in the room that day, but I know I would have tried to resist talking about price until I absolutely had to. There is so much more to discuss, which could impact what was ultimately agreed upon. Once a price is on the table, it can only go one way. Down.

What was good about Ford was the fact that we’d earned our place in the room with the Head of Europe. He’d witnessed the effect, or it had been brought to his attention, and now he wanted it in his dealerships. Getting the deal, even one I didn’t like, was the culmination of a lot of team effort.

Doing the deal wasn’t difficult. Getting there was the hard bit.

It reminds me of John Feinstein’s best-selling classic about the PGA Tour, A Good Walk Spoiled.

He asks the question as to which player has the more difficult putt to make? The one on the 18th green on the last round of the last day of the season. The putt needs to go in to keep that player on the Nike Tour** for another year. Or a player already on the PGA Tour also on an 18th green. This player might see his prize money reduced substantially if he misses. But there’s always next time. He’s already earned the right to play at the highest level.

Knowing that I would leave when the right deal came along, I also started succession planning. Marketing had never been a big team; three or four people at most, trying to justify its existence within a sales-led culture. It still served an essential function, helping to grow the UK market while also supporting Europe as it gained in importance.

Claire fitted the brief perfectly. She lived locally and had been the Marketing Manager at Zyxel*** for some time. She proved to be a good choice and is now the Group Marketing Director, which she thoroughly deserves. I’m sure there were one or two bumps in the road which she’s since had to negotiate.

With Claire in place, I was able to explore other sales opportunities and assist the training team with the regular roadshows, which we offered to dealers who wanted to learn more about the benefits of CitNOW or needed a quick refresher. It was a time I enjoyed immensely because we were now playing on the PGA Tour, to borrow a metaphor.

Gordon was flat out chasing the low-hanging fruit in Europe, which left me to pick over missed opportunities in the UK. Because it was our biggest and most advanced market, anything new was most likely going to happen here.

Over the years, several attempts were made to launch new products to increase the average revenue per user (ARPU) or dealer, in our case. Bodyshop had tried and mainly failed because the imaging market was owned by Audatex.

The other was website imaging, which was ripe for change because it still relied on photographers visiting dealers once a week to take digital images of the new, used car stock that had arrived since the last visit.

All that was about to change when I visited an Inchcape dealership in Telford.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**The Nike Tour was an old developmental tour for the main PGA Tour. It is now called the Korn Ferry Tour. Many of the players were travelling between competitions in camper vans because their prize money barely paid their entry fees and living expenses.

***Zyxel is a networking company. We’d used plenty of their routers and access points in the early days.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

As we rolled closer to 2018 and sold the company, the dramas were no longer life-threatening. The board, approved by the shareholders, now had a very clear target in mind. The aim was to reach a point where the company would hopefully achieve a value of £30 million.

The simplest way to know how close we were was to look at the monthly recurring revenues. We believed we’d achieve our number if we could reach £1 million a month—a rough and ready three-times (ish) formula, which was deliberately conservative. Higher multiples had been bandied around, but this ready reckoner turned out to be reasonably accurate in the end.

It was also clear which shareholders wanted to stay and who wanted to leave. It came as no surprise to anyone that Donna and I were keen to go. We’d been working the coalface the longest and had had enough. Angela, our shareholder and only real investor, would automatically be paid out if and when the sale went through.

Berrie, one of our three original developers, was the only other shareholder looking for an exit. I never really understood why. His answer when we were gathered to discuss was always the same - there’s too much money on the table to refuse. Fair enough, as long as he was happy. I also suspect he felt more detached working from home in the Netherlands. There were now a lot of good programmers in Stirling, and Berrie didn’t have such a pivotal role. A lot had changed since he’d rewritten the inherited JavaScript, and he was no longer essential to the company's product development.

Neither Donna nor I were. Neither is anyone, come to that. From Alistair's perspective, we were an annoying, immovable block, our significant shareholding giving us far too much control for his liking. He was desperate to get rid of us at the first available opportunity. The feeling was mutual, and a target was something we could all get behind.

A target helps to create focus; achieving it requires a gargantuan effort, a lot of belief and a bit of luck. We’d sailed past £500k per month relatively easily once we stopped being distracted by conquering the world and focused on more mundane opportunities closer to home. We were helped by a maturing UK market combined with significant revenues now appearing in Europe.

The increasingly rapid influence of YouTube also helped us. It constantly reminded our target audience that video was a powerful marketing tool that might help their businesses.

The German manufacturers had always been our biggest networks in the UK, and we were keen to see this replicated in Europe. We slowly saw this progress with Volkswagen and Audi in Italy, Spain and France. Our relative success with Peugeot and Renault in the UK was not to be repeated in France.

We even went backwards at one point when Peugeot (PSA) decided to create their competitive solution, rolling it out into several pilot countries, including France and Belgium, whose dealers had been using CitNOW.

We’d been warned several years earlier. They’d approached Yves, our French General Manager, about investing in our company. Perhaps rollout within the PSA network would have been guaranteed, but it would have jeopardised every other manufacturer's relationship. It was a firm non from us.

I still don’t understand why a car manufacturer would bother with third-party software like ours. Developing the app is relatively straightforward, provided the necessary integrations give the same level of functionality. A bigger problem is having the training resources to ensure it is being used, and the tenacity to keep returning when it isn’t.

Our biggest European deal was Ford Europe, which no one would have predicted, especially as all the German brands mostly used CitNOW in the UK. Typically, we had always done better with the premium brands and struggled more with volume brands such as Ford and GM.

It wasn’t because of a lack of interest. The problems always involved lukewarm pilots and the calibre of managers at dealer level. I knew how hard it could be to get their attention. To most, I was an irritating interruption to a mountain of to-dos. Often, I’d been forgotten, not even making it into the manager’s diary, an unpleasant surprise when I appeared in their reception. There were also exceptions, which helped me as I struggled to find a genuinely interested audience.

On average, the premium brands were better at getting started because they were prepared to invest more time and effort to see results. When a dealer’s sales manager or aftersales manager said, We’re doing this, it tended to be successful more often.

There had already been meetings with Ford at their now closed UK head office in Brentwood when the Ford Europe deal was done. My opportunity to see their wonderful seventh floor was as a stand-in for Gordon and a meeting with the Aftersales Director. I had my uses because the client never felt snubbed if they met the company's founder.

The meeting was essential, but routine. We were edging towards some aftersales agreement in the UK, and I was there to field any awkward questions our account manager couldn’t handle. And of course, to show respect.

The seventh floor was the executive corridor for the most senior UK management. It was wonderful and something straight out of the fifties. My first thought about exiting the lift was whether it had ever been used as a film set.

The corridor wasn’t a corridor at all; it was more the width of a modern A-road, with offices running down the left-hand side with panoramic views of the Essex countryside.

The Aftersales Director’s office was via his secretary’s office, which protected the entrance. There was dark oak panelling everywhere, which looked much less sombre when we finally entered the inner sanctum, the size of a badminton court, flooded with light from the picture windows. Our man had just stood up from his desk on one side of the room, gesturing us towards the other, a comfortably relaxed lounge, olive green cloth coloured furniture around a long rectangular coffee table. His secretary took our drinks order.

I loved the majesty and history of this 50-plus-year-old museum. I was immediately 7 years old again, going into my Dad’s Unilever office in Bromborough (Wirral) for the first time. He didn’t have one of the glass emporiums, but a desk outside his boss’s office with everyone else.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Claudia rounded off our horribilis annus by collecting all of our financial woes and writing them off in one go. Nearly £1 million went down the paper toilet. The good news was being able to start the following year in much better shape, much closer to a cashflow positive situation.

Costs had been cleared out that we couldn’t afford. I was sad to lose people, but delighted that we got rid of the ego-oriented trappings, such as the Manchester office and the chauffeur, even if he was a lovely Liverpool supporter.

It also meant we could focus our attention and limited resources on some of our biggest opportunities, supporting growth in the largely untapped European markets.

There is still one company dead end left to untangle, which I’ve been ignoring. I don’t really know why? It’s just been sitting there, untouched, when it definitely deserves a little something. It happened at a similar time to our Asian adventures, this time on the opposite side of the globe. The main protagonist, a true cock amongst cocks.

When I first met Jack, I noticed his teeth, they were impossible to miss. Big, brash, very white, and almost too big for his mouth that articulated an East Coast drawl. In European dental tourism parlance, you’d be correct and forgiven for calling them Turkey teeth.

The gravelly, rasping sound which filled his sentences must have been encouraged by chainsmoking Capstan Full Strength or some Yankee equivalent.

It wasn’t true, of course, Jack liked the finer things in life. His lips had never been sullied with something so cheap as a cigarette. Jack preferred cigars. Big, fat, ostentatious ones from Cuba, with a glass of bourbon, plenty of ice and an audience.

His shirts were crisp, well-pressed, and white, interrupted by fine stripes that neatly fitted his trim 6-foot frame. The collars momentarily reminded me of Harry Hill, the British comedian, although the similarity ended there. Jack wasn’t funny. He liked talking business, and talking about himself, constantly. Self-reflection would be an entirely new, uncomfortable idea he would have no time for.

Around the same time as the wild goose chase to Japan and China - ahh, but think of the airmiles, we were approached by the Hyundai distributor in Ireland, who wanted to discuss becoming CitNOW’s distributor in the US. They were cash-rich and looking for new opportunities to make even more.

Their qualification for being taken seriously, aside from deep pockets and a desire to engage, was the man himself - Jack, their guaranteed, nailed-on, winning formula. A US citizen with Irish roots who had worked in the car industry for years. He knew exactly how to make CitNOW a huge US success, starting on the East coast, where he happened to live near Boston.

So far, so good.

If we did do anything with these guys, the biggest risk was going to be their money. Our main concern was how much time would need to be devoted to getting them started and how would we protect the brand, if the venture was a failure?

The question of leaving the States well alone, for software litigation reasons, was now conveniently forgotten, because someone else was footing the bill. We could treat this as paid for research, exploring the American market. What not to do, if there was ever a next time.

Our Irish friends were an interesting bunch. In meetings, their accountant, responsible for delivering the project, seemed to write down everything ever said in his A4 notebook. Page after page of notes, talking about best practice and how to get started, was, in the end, largely ignored. Jack knew best.

We’d had so much easy success with the aftersales service, compared to sales, that we strongly recommended that they focus on the US workshops first. They didn’t because Jack was a salesman who believed he could sell anything to anyone. His idea was to start with sales, and because US dealers were bigger, with perhaps twenty-plus salespeople, the monthly licence fee would be four times as much.

He regaled us with stories of how unscrupulous US car dealers could be, all adding to his rite of passage. Even his old sales team would sometimes close out sales by putting particularly awkward customers in a room which they couldn’t escape from until they signed the paperwork.

I’m not sure how you imprison a potential customer, something about a faulty door handle. It was all part of the larger than life, bullshit, which followed Jack around.

Given the significant store the Irish team had put in him, I assumed he had ended up with his own string of US dealerships, a self-made man living the American dream. I established, with a bit of digging, that his career had plateaued at Sales Manager, but the site was the size of at least half a dozen UK dealers combined.

The one thing everyone could agree on was when Steve was hired.

He’d joined as a graduate intern, one of our first three hires, during the summer of 2011. Not only did he survive, he became a real asset to the business. He learnt fast and took on more and more responsibility, often without prompting, just what a startup is looking for.

He was also growing faster than we were, so when he resigned, we weren’t entirely surprised. Fortunately, Jack, who’d got to know him because of the stubbornly slow set-up in the US, persuaded him to go and work for the new company in Boston. He said yes, and everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

Selfishly, we hadn’t lost Steve completely and we knew we could trust him to shout if and when he needed to.

The new enterprise started slowly, before grinding to a halt 24 months later. The number of signed up dealers was less than twenty and these had mostly happened when they’d decided to make the Workshop application available.

Contractually, they’d failed to deliver, even though we’d been more than generous in shifting the agreed sales expectations further away. I don’t believe they were very surprised when we decided to finally cancel their contract. The only surprise was Jack, who still seemed to have plenty of capital with the Irish contingent. How he explained the lack of sales and several complaints from female members of staff, who knows?

Several years later, they re-launched again with their own product.

After CitNOW was first sold, the new owners must have been looking for a foothold back into the US because they purchased the Irish start-up, minus Jack of course.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

He never forgave me. Why would he? Not that I cared, the company and its future were what mattered. Having taken control away from him, it must have felt like his worst nightmare. He hid it well. Having read the room, he knew opinion was not on his side, so he accepted the situation and got on with what needed to be done. There was no complaining in the following weeks, beyond a vexation that he’d now lost a good friend, which certainly couldn’t have been his fault.

Claudia, our new Finance Director, was able to join quickly. She’d been in a temporary contract, which was nearly as attractive as her automotive and software start-up experience.

Her excellent, new monthly board packs and presentations were soon being delivered, albeit the bad news still being presented, but in a clearer, more indefatigable way. She knew what needed to be done, as did we, and I’m sure she was aware of a certain sensitivity around decision-making with only Alistair for company. Everyone was keen to avoid a return to the bad old days, which would be difficult to repeat anyway, so soon after the last debacle.

Breaking the mould was the first step; the next was to remove cost from the UK. The account managers and the management hierarchy all went, leaving us with the problem of dealing with the fallout, now six people lighter in the UK, including another board member.

Initially, there had been concerns about fewer regular visits to the manufacturers or the bigger dealer groups. The cosy monthly meetings at head office and free visitations to their underperforming dealers had to stop because they weren’t factored into the monthly licence fee. New business was in short supply from our fully expensed account team with company cars, who preferred the comfort of dealing with account issues and writing daily reports. The time needed to generate sales simply wasn’t there. People were busy, but not on what was essential to the company’s or their future.

We couldn’t put the monthly licence fees up; we were already the premium-priced leader in the market with cheaper competition. The answer was to continue growing and serving our existing customers' needs more economically.

I’m also not blaming those who left. They were caught in the middle of a young company needing to change direction quickly. They were also being paid bonuses just for doing their day job. The sales side of their bonus was rarely, if ever, achieved because there was too much to do with the existing accounts. Catch 22.

We’d also kept changing the brief, trying to find a way to continue our excellent face-to-face customer service while still being able to afford to pay for it with new licence revenue offsetting the cost.

How would our customers react to these significant changes?

Angela reminded us that her business had always relied on telephone support from her Crewe head office, and it had never been an issue. If our bigger accounts needed face-to-face meetings, they would now have to be handled by board members. There was no longer anyone else.

The reality was that our customers didn’t seem too bothered. Less frequent meetings continued, but now they saw board directors rather than account managers. It was probably viewed as a good trade-off. Plus, our agendas were more likely to include new licence fee opportunities in their bodyshops or for web imaging of used vehicle stock.

The exceptional Sarah, who’d been with us a long time in various internal sales and administrative roles, took on all the dealers looking to cancel contracts (we still had a relatively low churn rate) and used our much cheaper field-based product experts when she needed an on-site freebie. Dealers were encouraged to buy a day’s training, with one of our trainers visiting the dealership, but these were difficult to sell when the dealer was in cancellation mode.

The only real wobble we had was with Motor Trader, one of the trade journals. I’d dealt firsthand with their editor before when we’d been shortlisted for an industry innovation award. I’d turned up in Croydon, at one of those featureless brown brick office blocks, to make a presentation to their judging panel.

The editor had been flanked by two elder statesmen in blazers, who would have looked more at home sitting in the lounge at The Royal Automobile Club on Pall Mall, sipping brandy. They smiled politely in all the right places, and we were awarded a ‘commended’ (not even a precious metal) on the night, which was basically an insult, given what we’d already achieved in the UK.

At the time of this near miss, we weren’t spending advertising money with them or taking numerous tables at Grosvenor House, Park Lane, for the award ceremony. When that changed, we won our fair share.

Someone was stoking this editor with rumours that we had a cashflow crisis, numerous redundancies were being made, and half the UK workforce had gone. I’d had several gun-to-the-head moments before with the press, and I managed to persuade this editor to come into the office for a meeting before he went to press the following week.

He’d never visited us in Wokingham before, and it would be easy to refute much of the bullshit which was now being spread quite effectively by one of our previous employees.

I didn’t blame the muck spreader. They were angry and had been totally mismanaged in the lead-up to our current decision.

Alistair insisted that he was at the meeting, which was mostly a bad idea, but could be spun as a good one. With him in the room and our Head of HR, three would have looked like we were trying to overt a crisis. I left them to it. A piece was posted, but it was much fairer and closer to the truth.

Importantly, no one saw any hares running.

We moved on.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Why all the high jinks?

It was deliberately set up as an ambush, sort of, because the fewer people who knew, the better. I was particularly keen that Alistair be kept out of the loop, although there was no guarantee that this would end up being the case. Geoffrey had started attending my meetings with Ken and was fully briefed on my intentions. It had been in discussion with Geoffrey that the decision had been made to remove Steve, or at least attempt to. He could have forewarned Alistair at any point, but chose not to do so.

I was nervous. I wasn’t going to get a second attempt at this, so it needed to go well. There was no presentation, which would have been crass and not the right sentiment at all. I liked Steve. We all did. This cause of action was solely to stop the runaway train and bring a halt to the entire financial mire which now bogged us down.

Instead, I stood up, always a good idea in such situations, and began to summarise. Where were we, and what did I believe had to happen next?

Before reaching this point, I had had numerous discussions with Donna about how we thought this meeting would unfold. Who would vote in favour of what we were proposing, and who was likely to object?

Every shareholder had a vote, which meant a total of seven. Geoffrey was also present, primarily to fulfil his role as impartial observer. I was also half-expecting him to throw his more objective weight behind the proposal, if the need arose. For some reason, I don’t think Chris, our other non-exec, was present.

Our assumption was always that Alistair would object. But would anybody else join him?

I didn’t know Angela well at this point, but I knew she wasn’t happy with what had been happening. There had already been murmurings at several board meetings, a sense of general dissatisfaction that the business was under-performing, and so soon after she’d decided to invest.

In many respects, she was also the most critical vote around the table that day. Everyone else was there because of sweat equity. She wasn’t. There had been a significant leap of faith on her part, and a substantial investment made. Hard-earned cash, which had opened the door to more credit with Santander. This could never have happened unless Angela had committed her money to our balance sheet.

Geoffrey knew Angela well and was confident that she would welcome the proposed change.

This then left our three tech shareholders and a question mark over how they might react. Colin, our Technical Director, had the most active role in the running of the company, and I thought the most likely to object and side with Alistair.

Here was a Director facing the sack because he was guilty of not putting a stop to the company's deteriorating financial situation or planning a sensible course of action to escape it. It wasn’t difficult to draw some similarities with Colin’s position, who knew exactly what it felt like to be dealing with the constant, unchecked demands of our MD.

Berrie and Michael were less enamoured with Alistair, but then they didn’t have to work with him either. At some point, I’d heard that Michael had had a significant spat, but I never unearthed the details as to why. It didn’t matter. It was reassuring enough to know that he was prepared to stand his ground, an encouraging sign under the circumstances.

The other good news was that these guys were not pimple-faced rookies. They all had extensive experience, having co-founded at least two software startups, and were well-equipped to understand the significance of their current predicament. I also assumed that whatever they decided, they would likely stick together and vote as a group, three votes going one way or the other.

If they went against me, it would likely result in a 3-3 draw, with Alistair having the deciding vote. That would be a serious failure, so I also had a sweetener up my sleeve, which might just tip the balance.

As soon as I started to speak, I knew that Alistair thought I was coming for him. Was there just a small flicker of relief on his face when I announced that Steve should depart the company with immediate effect? The next Financial Director would be very different. One with shareholder approval who would be expected to behave more independently. No more sideshows.

His first reaction was to argue that we couldn’t do this because of the existing shareholders’ agreement. Donna anticipated this and rebuffed Alistair immediately, quoting the necessary section, which made it quite clear that there were no legal obstacles to taking this course of action.

I continued.

I realise that the relationship between you and me is no longer a good one. You don’t see me as your Chairman, so there is little point in continuing with the current arrangement. It’s not providing any benefit or value to the company, which is my primary consideration as a shareholder.

I propose that Geoffrey be appointed as our new Non-Executive Chairman, and I hope that he will provide you with the support you need to fulfil your duties as Managing Director. Geoffrey has already indicated to me that he would be happy to accept this position.

And then I shut up and waited.

Angela immediately dived in, explaining her concerns about Steve and the fact that even today, of all days, he hadn’t insisted on being present at this meeting, given what was being discussed. Instead, he’d preferred to prepare a financial handout, defining the current situation without providing any sort of way out. She was in favour of the proposed course of action.

Geoffrey also followed up with his support for the proposal, reinforcing the fact that we could do a lot better with our next appointment. Hiring the right Financial Director would further strengthen the company and increase the likelihood of a future sale.

This just left the other three shareholders and their thoughts. They said surprisingly little. I believe I was mildly admonished for not sharing my thoughts and proposal in advance, but they had no serious objections.

The dice had been thrown, the proposal approved, without having to directly point the finger. Geoffrey offered to give Steve the news, but Alistair insisted that he talk to him.

The search for a new Financial Director began immediately.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

To understand our need for change, it might be helpful to understand who was on the board and how it functioned.

The board meetings only really got going when Alistair joined, and Colin was our acting Technical Director. (Colin and the other Codevio** partners weren’t, as yet, shareholders or working full-time for CitNOW).

BMW had successfully rolled out, and we now had more cash to employ Codevio**. It still wasn’t enough, which is why we eventually conducted a debt-for-equity swap, a good outcome for everyone.

As we grew and hired more senior people, such as Gordon, Steve, and Nick***, it was assumed that they would automatically join the board. It made sense as everyone was required to provide a monthly update and have a good understanding of what was happening in the business. It was an obvious time for all this information to be shared with the key individuals who collectively contributed to the company's success. We wanted them to be a part of it, on the same journey, which naturally meant being a board member.

With the addition of Chris, our wise senior statesman, we had already become an unwieldy bunch, although I didn’t think so at the time. There were other drawbacks as well, which became more apparent as our problem escalated.

We never seemed to vote on anything. The acrimony had not yet reached a tipping point. The continuing underperformance, which we were reminded of every month, had metastasised. It had become a part of us. Nothing changed apart from its size and the constant growth. It caused very little upset now. There were usually several awkward minutes during Steve’s presentation, before it was largely ignored for the rest of the day, as the agenda moved on quickly to other matters and future results, which were expected to change everything.

It wasn’t that difficult to believe when you considered how many customer-facing reps we now had. Some of this pent-up opportunity sitting in the sales pipeline was going to come in. It had to, didn’t it?

Except for Steve, Colin and Geoffrey, who arrived later, we were a board of salespeople, and the answer was to sell our way out. Alistair’s favourite crass retort to sales and budgets was, Reach for the stars and land on the moon. A great sentiment which conveniently ignores our fiscal responsibility or what to do when the rocket can’t even reach the International Space Station, to play along with the metaphor.

The sales targets set by Alistair and Steve, sitting around a lake in North Wales, were as hopelessly inaccurate as the first German ones. Getting them agreed with Gordon and Nick had also been far more of a negotiation than it ever needed to be. Neither had been particularly happy, but perhaps a little sales bravado took over, deciding that if they considered it a stretch target, it was not as bad as it first seemed. I expect somewhere in the back of their minds, they thought it would be renegotiated if their initial reactions proved to be right.

As the year wore on, the situation worsened because, like all good sales forecasts, the monthly target increased as the year progressed. Every month, we were adding to our shit pile. It balanced beautifully on a spreadsheet; our burgeoning cost base was still able to return a reasonable profit, thanks to bounteous sales. The reality was, we were miles away.

There were conversations, of course. It wasn’t as if this was an insurmountable problem which couldn’t be fixed with a significant dose of common sense.

But discussions became discouraged, often being politely closed down by Alistair, who I assume was still star-gazing and working on the premise that we had enough time to come good because of our cash reserve. He certainly didn’t want to face the prospect of a new reality where we would have to address our cost basis and let some people go.

There was also another elephant in the room. Steve could not control Alistair, a complaint he expressed on several occasions. It would be wrong to say that he was always brow-beaten into submission, but he certainly didn’t want to be constantly arguing either. Steve was after an easier life, and going into battle with Alistair wasn’t worth the hassle.

Previously, he’d had his own modular housing business, which had failed. He was probably there a bit too early, didn’t have deep enough pockets to wait out the protracted planning processes and got caught out by at least one bad council decision.

For the most part, Alistair and Steve got along well. They would do, because Alistair was a fan of people who agreed with him. Decisions were made that shouldn’t have been, such as Steve deciding to change our accounting software without consulting the board. The only person who knew, of course, was Alistair, who trusted Steve’s judgement and didn’t want the hassle of board approval. The board was proving useful for obfuscation and unhelpful when needed for a decision.

As the Chairman (in name only), I realised that I’d failed Steve. He needed more support, but I was barely on speaking terms with Alistair. Any conversation about Steve’s backbone and Alistair’s bullying tactics was not going to be very productive and only piss the pair of them off.

We needed a strong, independent financial director who was prepared to go head-to-head with Alistair when required. Someone comfortable saying no.

It wasn’t a difficult conclusion to reach. With the help of Ken and Geoffrey, I decided that Steve would have to be the one who went. The alternative was far too complicated and could have potentially damaged the business. There would undoubtedly have been a lot more cleaning up to do.

The ambush was set to take place in Manchester after the board meeting. I had requested a meeting of all shareholders.

For once, the regional office, which we didn’t need, was going to be put to good use.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Codevio was a software development company owned by Colin, Michael, and Berrie. It was finally bought by Citnow in a debt-for-equity swap.

***Gordon - Sales Director, Steve - Finance Director, Nick - European Managing Director.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

With the company's natural evolution, we had moved from a regular quorum of four shareholders meeting at Hogarth’s Hotel in Solihull to a much flabbier melange of senior managers and non-execs, with some shareholders in attendance.

The meetings were usually helpful, as was catching up the night before the board meeting, as people travelled in. Over time, as the company grew, they naturally became more serious; there were fewer gatherings, and even less as 2016 progressed.

Our pinch point was fast approaching as a poor new business January carried on into February and March. It wasn’t long before we were discussing a poor quarter’s results rather than the month. Before long, we were talking about the half-year figures, with no meaningful improvements to our deficit, and its cumulative growth.

This predicament didn’t mean that our monthly revenue wasn’t rising because it was, albeit slowly. The problem was that our cost base remained stubbornly high because most of it was wages, and there had been no attempt yet to address that. We continued to lose significant sums of money every month.

It was time for the board to face its first really true test. Every business runs into problems, and ours was no exception. We now needed to find a way to deliver the most positive outcome possible without damaging the foundations of a good business. Whatever we did, it needed to appear that we were still moving forward and not having to retrench because we’d overexpanded.

Surprisingly, there was less appetite for change than you might expect. Instead, our day-long meetings continued in precisely the same fashion as before. Steve’s** financial report succinctly reminded us that we were making a significant monthly loss, mainly because the UK wasn’t growing fast enough. We expected Europe to be slower, but the lack of UK progress was rapidly eating into our Santander bank loan and Angela’s investment.

It became clear quite quickly that the board would never make the necessary, timely decisions that were needed. It was partly because of its size, the lack of leadership in addressing the real problem, and the fact that what needed to happen would undoubtedly disrupt the current status quo. There was a preference, not unexpectedly, to want to continue in the naive belief that a recruitment freeze would work wonders as we quickly traded our way out of the current predicament.

Our first real investor, Angela, was also attending board meetings. I don’t think she could quite believe what she read in our board reports and witnessed firsthand at the meetings.

On the face of it, she might have been forgiven for not being too concerned. The UK and European sales reports were constantly burgeoning with lots of opportunities. But the same prospects kept appearing on the same forecast month after month, never being closed, sometimes disappearing without a trace as the author applied a slightly bigger dose of realism.

The sales pipeline was real enough, but the reality of when a sale would close was nearly always too optimistic. It was a common problem and one of the reasons why our monthly targets were being missed. They were also too high and unrealistic, with an increasing pressure to chase business because of the overhead issue. It had been easy to spend money and hire new people within the newly agreed budget, but it had happened far too quickly and before any forecasted revenue had been delivered.

The meetings started to become more fractious as the reality of the situation began to sink in. Department heads had to start defending their people, and old debates, like the need for UK account managers, were dug up again. Where were the obvious places to make cuts?

The headcount freeze might have been a good start. It made little sense when Alistair was still sanctioning consultancy fees outside of board meetings, continuing to follow his agenda, aware that approval would most likely be denied if it had gone to a vote.

Collectively, it all exposed the nub of our problem - turkeys are not going to vote for Christmas. Substantial change was needed if we were ever going to move on successfully and put this behind us.

My discussions with Ken*** were really helpful, but they couldn’t continue in isolation. I needed to find a way to remove the board from the picture and arrange an extraordinary meeting of the shareholders to address this crisis head-on. I intended to present a proposition we would vote on, rather than play the blame game or debate ad infinitum, which was already happening at the board meetings.

I needed support from elsewhere, which fortunately turned out to be Geoffrey, who had recently joined the board as another non-executive director.

Geoffrey had been the Group Ops Director of Sytner before deciding to leave. They are a prestigious UK dealer group with plenty of BMW dealerships and, more recently, a group of car supermarkets. He gave the impression that work was now probably optional, but had accepted Alistair’s kind invitation to join the board, impressed with Citnow's progress over the 5 years he’d known about us.

Alistair was having a bromance because Geoffrey had generously lent him a Maclaren for the weekend while he was still at Sytner. In fairness, he was a senior statesman, well known in automotive circles, who might be able to open a few more doors and put a bit more polish on our persona in preparation for any future sale, thoughts of which were a complete nonsense at the time. Importantly, though, Geoffrey had a foot in both camps.

What was needed now was a compelling argument to make the right changes, which everyone would find difficult to refuse. Well, nearly everyone.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Steve was our Finance Director.

***Ken was a friend of Donna’s with plenty of board-level automotive experience, who proved to be a great mentor during this challenging period.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Over the past 40 chapters, I haven’t been very complimentary about the consultants that we employed from time to time. Most delivered little to no value, but there were several exceptions. Chris, our long-standing and suffering ex-senior manager from General Motors, built the foundations of the European senior team with introductions to four of the five country managers we employed. The other, who certainly went under nearly everyone’s radar, was Ken. He’d been Head of Marketing and Comms at Hyundai, RAC and Inchcape and was a friend of Donna’s. He became a very useful ally and confidante when our sail boat** started to sink.

We introduced the idea of seeking his assistance at a board meeting which was immediately poo pooed by Alistair. We already had two non execs attending our board meetings, Chris and Geoffrey, so he wasn’t seeking more external help. It, of course, made us even more determined because they weren’t in a position to suggest the sort of radical action which we believed was now required. And certainly not at a board meeting, where some heads around the table might need to consider their position. The board needed leadership, and some trite statement about selling ourselves out of the current predicament wouldn’t cut it.

Objectivity and planning were precisely what we were after, and I started meeting Ken at our offices every 4 to 6 weeks.

I’d already met him 10 years before when Donna and I tried to persuade him to become an interactive TV advertiser when he was at RAC, joining some of the other companies who we were working with, including P&G, Unilever and Honda.

It was an unforgettable meeting, but not for the reasons you might have expected. Ken offered tea and coffee before patiently sitting through our presentation. It was only at the end, when the meeting was wrapping up, that he teased Donna about her new perfume and its remarkable authenticity to diesel, but not the one found in the department store.

Unfortunately, Donna had visited the petrol station before the meeting and managed to get more than a smattering of diesel on her clothes when the Land Rover spat back - an airlock problem shared with various manufacturers, now resolved. Despite her best efforts to dampen the impact in the RAC’s toilets, she hadn’t got away with it. We had to laugh, especially as Ken had sat through to the end, saying nothing, presumably conscious of the fire hazard sitting across the table.

When Donna made the introduction again, Ken was happy to meet. He had already gone part-time and was starting to be asked about potential non-executive roles, which he wasn’t rushing into. He met us in Wokingham wearing his black leathers, having decided to commute from his Surrey home on his BMW motorcycle.

I must admit to a pang of jealousy, Ken seemed so buttoned down. He’d had a successful career, mostly in automotive and was now beginning to enjoy himself, having the freedom to buy a big-engined BMW bike and go on rides with his son. His current job was winding down. He could enjoy spending more time with his family and do it all without worrying too much about the budget.

We, on the other hand, were looking down the barrel at a problem that could easily have finished the business off despite the years of hard work and sacrifices already made. Our efforts could all add up to very little, giving me recurring nightmares of a return to selling again, working hard for someone else well into my seventies to pay the bills.

We’d decided that the best way forward was for me to spend time with Ken alone. We didn’t want to be accused of indulging our whims, and it really didn’t need the two of us. Plus, we were busy, busier than ever, despite the more significant financial issues we were now starting to address.

I spent that first meeting outlining everything I could think of. We agreed that I would give Ken last month’s board pack, which included our quarterly accounts, so he could get a better understanding of what was happening before we reconvened.

I also talked about remuneration. He was the first consultant who told me not to worry about that, at least not for now. We could sort something out once he’d had a chance to review and reflect, having got a better understanding of our problems.

It was clear to us that we were in trouble. We knew that we needed to make changes before it was too late. I expected Ken to come to the same conclusion, which was part of the reason for asking in the first place. I just wanted to hear someone else tell me what we already knew.

He wasted no time either at our next meeting. His analogy was different from my sailboat, but the outcome was exactly the same. We were on an oil platform with an out-of-control fire. It was a serious emergency. The fire had to be contained and extinguished as a priority, which can be translated as getting a handle on your costs - now, before it’s too late and the whole rig goes up.

The confirmation was unequivocal. We were in deep shit and needed a sensible, well orchestrated plan to get back on track. It needed to be done stealthily so our customers remained unaware. If the press did find out, which was likely, we would have an entirely plausible story as to why we were cutting costs, plus some half-decent good news which deflected and diluted from their reason for a call in the first place.

The biggest issue was getting anything accepted by the board and Alistair once a plan was in place.

Part of the solution was down to Angela becoming a shareholder. It was time to stop addressing the board and time to start addressing the shareholders.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**A sailing boat was a metaphor for a company, which you can read about in Chapter 40.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

With the launch of two successful CitNOW apps in the UK - workshop and sales - the headcount in the UK steadily rose to meet demand. Our biggest addition in Wokingham was Account Managers, whose job was to nurture our relationships with manufacturers and the bigger dealer groups that had invested.

I always thought the gold standard for client management in the UK was G-Forces (essentially a web agency), who employed some senior personalities to manage their customers. But their monthly service fees were also particularly healthy, revenue worth protecting and expanding, as they represented a significant chunk of any dealer group’s marketing spend.

We didn’t have the same revenue stream per dealer or group, but we worked with many more of them. We also wanted to offer good service to all our customers, whether on the phone or in person. We knew it was important, and I’d heard many complaints on my travels about poor service levels from other third-party suppliers, not always justified, I might add.

The UK started to go wrong because we weren’t managing our costs well enough. Our cost base was predicated on making our sales target, which we’d now consistently started to miss.

The European guys were building their businesses more slowly than we would have liked, but this was to be expected. We’d already failed in Germany once, so even with the smart, more senior Hans-Jörg in charge, he needed time to build and realise those annual revenues. Spain and France were essentially greenfield sites in the same position. There was plenty of interest and a long list of prospects, but no one was yet writing big cheques.

It was even more difficult in the Netherlands and Benilux. It wasn’t a big enough market on its own, and there were no incumbent manufacturers to speak with, only uninvested distributors. Erik would prove to be our one casualty as Europe found its feet.

When Nick became our European Managing Director, we also decided to create the same titled role in the UK. It was a mistake that Alistair and I are culpable for, only for different reasons. I should have fought harder to take on the role myself. I would have enjoyed the challenge, and I was more than capable. Well, I would say that.

Everyone agreed that we needed a safe pair of hands to manage our one well-performing region. Alistair wanted his own man, so he decided to promote our Commercial Director, his namesake, who had been doing a perfectly okay job before he took up the newly created position.

One of the marketing lectures I attended when studying for the Chartered Institutes Diploma always stuck with me because a sailboat was a good analogy for how companies behave. I also like them, which must be a throwback to being a sea scout once, sailing dinghies at West Kirby Marina on the Wirral.

Imagine momentarily that the sailboat is the company, its destination is the mission, the crew are the employees. The Captain is on the tiller, navigating and steering us across the sea. Wind is the most significant variable and represents sales. No wind means the boat is becalmed in the doldrums. Sales have slowed dramatically, but we still have an entire crew, who are bored and hungry, eating up supplies based on reaching the destination quicker. Some have even taken up fishing.

The skipper needs to find the wind again with the help of the navigator (Finance Director) and first mate (Sales Director). Finally, a strong wind fills the sails (our order book is filling nicely), and it’s a case of staying on that course for as long as possible.

It’s a delicate balance though. What if the wind blows up to storm force and the sails push the boat too fast in heavy, choppy seas? If the sails aren’t trimmed or some taken down, there’s a chance the boat will sink.

This would be the equivalent of overtrading, quickly leading to insolvency. There isn’t enough cash to operate the company - drowned by debt, if you like.

In our company situation, it surprised me how quickly we started to flounder. Our company was now bigger, so it needed more sales, which meant more people, but we were only seeing modest revenue increases. The worry was that the UK MD, controlled but not supported by Alistair, wasn’t reacting to the changing situation. Nothing was happening. There was still cash in the bank, and we continued to plough on regardless, making a loss (in the UK, not expected, Europe as expected) month after month.

Alistair and Steve (Finance Director) had previously disappeared to North Wales to sit around a lake where they’d concocted an ambitious budget with plenty of growth. (Never let a salesperson write a budget; they’re always far too optimistic). The maths was okay and finally board-approved, but like every budget, it was predicated on a level of sales growth and revenue which wasn’t happening.

It’s easy to spend money and we’d now added an extra layer of UK management, adding some nice-to-have people, none of whom were making a difference to our sales. We had one character (I genuinely can’t remember his name) whose annual salary was over £50k to focus on the commercial responsibilities of the newly promoted Alistair. With virtually no new contracts to oversee, he was now spending time on ISO 9001, a recognised quality management systems standard, to fill his days. Necessary, of course, but the timing was completely wrong. We should have been in crisis mode because our reserves were dwindling. This is not what we’d promised Santander or our brand new investor, Angela.

It was time to trim the sails and change direction.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

Like most companies, we made some good and not-so-good hires. Consultants came and went, easy to offload when results didn’t materialise. It was a similar picture with sales staff and product genii**, especially the newer starters. One product genius didn’t last a week because he couldn’t get up in the morning. But there were also long periods when no one left, and we were hiring. For the most part, I hope people enjoyed working for CitNOW and that the low churn reflected satisfaction in Wokingham and Stirling.

Colin, our Chief Technical Officer (CTO), probably had one of the most challenging jobs trying to hold on to software engineers, as well as hiring new ones to keep up with increasing demands. As we grew, there was a general shift to hire younger and train in good habits as experience priced itself out.

I never understood why Colin didn’t offshore projects in an attempt to keep costs down and productivity up, but my questions fell on deaf ears. Michael especially (the other tech shareholder in Stirling) insisted that we weren’t big enough. It was the objection I always remember, and it never went anywhere with the board because no one had any experience to challenge the claim. A good reason why we should have pivoted away earlier from board members with only automotive experience to others familiar with software as a service.

I expect offshoring would have involved a fair bit of travel to Eastern Europe or probably even further to India, which might have been a factor. We were also all old enough to remember when BT and at least one bank off-shored much of their first line telephone support to India with mixed results. Who even bothers phoning a bank now?

One of our best board hires was Nick. I distinctly remember when he joined because we were in the early stages of responding to the Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) request for information. This was our pitch for the rest of Europe. The UK had already been essentially won, one dealer or group at a time, over several years. We suspected Europe wanted to be different, not that they ever said so. They certainly weren’t going to roll over and hand it to us on a plate. Plus, by now, Autos on Show (AoS) had finally woken up and had been trying to win back some JLR dealers in the UK with little success.

My experience with requests for information is that they’re a massive waste of time. The client is already biased, knows who they want to appoint, but must be seen to go through a process. I’d written a first draft but was bumped off the job when Nick arrived. Alistair wanted to deploy his new shiny shiny, who had previous experience with such thankless tasks.

You might be wondering why I didn’t object.

I liked Nick, and the way he’d started, and given his knowledge of JLR, it made sense. I didn’t think I had anything to prove either. We’d hired him to make a difference, and maybe this was a chance to tip the balance against the odds. It didn’t, but that had nothing to do with his written response. I expect it never even got read beyond the one-page summary.

The next real fight with Alistair was yet to happen. The monthly results were beginning to turn sour. A correction might be needed if our newfound UK profitability continued to be challenged.

JLR chose AoS to manage their European rollout, except it got watered down to mean next to nothing. The UK was nearly entirely CitNOW, and we had already hired grown-ups to manage the rest of Europe. Aside from Cesare in Italy, there was Manuel in Spain, Yves in France, Hans-Jörg in the German-speaking countries and Erik in the Netherlands. Except for Erik, they were all because of Chris’s*** handiwork and his network of European contacts within General Motors.

Individual countries could choose their solution, provided they conformed to the JLR standard, ironically a standard I originally wrote. AoS had no one on the ground in Europe, so we continued to pick up business, but it was a slow grind. No one was in a hurry to embrace video, which was partly a reflection of mainland Europe being slower adopters and the JLR decision not being mandated.

We threw Nick into the deep end when he arrived. Firstly, he sorted out training, removed the incumbent manager, and appointed Amir. He’s still there today, heading up a bigger and better training division nearly 10 years on. Nick’s initial responsibility also included HR, but after a few months, we made him MD for Europe, creating a formidable task force which continued through to the sale of the company and beyond.

Nick’s star shone brightly until one day it didn’t, well at least not with Alistair. He’d become increasingly frustrated by his forthright views and where our focus needed to be; the two were no longer on the same page quite as often as they might have been. It was clear that Nick didn’t tolerate despots any more than I did.

The Europeans were finally in a position to deliver, although it was still early doors. We’d been able to hire some expensive suits, but we now needed to see some results. If the UK remained profitable, we could support Europe until it took off. We were now looking for that first big win.

Having cash in the bank was a novel experience. It meant we had choices that were unavailable to us before. We could hire for those positions which we thought we always needed, and we could also erode our profitability by not delivering the sales uplift required to maintain them.

Having cash in the bank allowed us to make some silly decisions. And we did.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**A Product Genius was a new role, a working apprenticeship. We deliberately hired young, energetic people with no automotive experience to provide demos, offer some training support, hopefully spot sales, and, as they matured, start closing them out.

***Chris was our long-standing ex-General Motors consultant, and this was his finest work.

Most of the time, the pre-prepping is wishful thinking, but I still manage to sneak a few hours in time to post on Friday at 09:00 GMT.

Not this week.

I’ve been distracted by the antics in the US and what I could/should be doing. It’s been enough to stop me thinking straight, or at least creatively.

If you’ve been reading my column for a while you’ll know I drive a Tesla Model Y. I’ve written about it before here, where you’ll also find another link to the first Chamonix trip we took in a different electric vehicle.

With Musk revealing his true revolting self now, I find myself, along with many liberal-minded Brits, caught holding the baby, to borrow a very British phrase. I’m feeling uncomfortable. The decent thing to do is get rid. If you choose to behave so outrageously, then fuck you and your Nazi bullshit Elon.

But that would also be punishing me and Mrs H.

I believed I was buying it for all the right reasons at the time. Bought with 100 miles on the clock, its resale value is now in the deepest, darkest recesses of the U-bend. Buying new has always been a mug’s game, long before titchy Tesla came along, and I knew that. But I had expectations to go long with this vehicle. Even at 200,000 miles, the loss of range is only expected to be about 15%. Many will comfortably complete 300,000 miles, and I expected to be sick of the sight of it long before it’s practically useless.

Last week, I delivered it to Tesla at Park Royal for a service, except there’s no such thing, really. They replaced the wiper blades, serviced the air con and flipped the tyres around. I paid £180 for this novel experience. It has 40,000 miles on the clock. No other charges so far apart from a set of winter tyres.

All the communication was done through the app. I didn’t see anyone when I dropped the car off, and no one on my return. I only knew someone had touched it because it was in a slightly different place. I noticed the wipers when some weather arrived.

I drove 700 miles alone last weekend, which gave me a chance to listen to a few podcasts of a financial and political nature. I wanted time to think. I still admire my Tesla and how easy it makes driving. I can’t love it anymore, although I love that the share price is now punishing Musk.

On Monday, I sold every investment that had anything to do with the US stock market, which was pretty much everything because I’m a tech enthusiast.

No more Facebook, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Space X or Tesla. You can all fuck off, you spineless bunch of sycophants that felt it appropriate to recognise a convicted felon and rapist.

Feeling much better now, thank you.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

When we began, the high street banks were the only place to find credit for quite some time. We knew alternatives existed, but they only started to appear realistic once we’d moved into our bigger first floor Wokingham office, and our headcount must have exceeded at least 20 people, maybe more. Hiring Steve, our first Finance Director, signalled the start of the process, especially when we appointed a decently-sized regional accountancy practice in Reading.

They pulled strings to get the meeting with HSBC, and a small team of bankers, including a woman, rather than the usual solo suited men in their high street backoffices, devoid of windows, as if natural light might affect focus and decision making.

Rejection was typically a polite affair. Time was made regardless of the almost inevitable outcomes. Teas and coffees, offered by a Sandra or a Liz, who’d collected us from the other side of the tellers' divide, then passed us through a disguised doorway with a 6 or 8 digit security code.

The HSBC building was very different because light flooded in from the high floor to ceiling, tinted windows. If looks were its only credentials, this was a business, not a bank. It was one of their regional HQs outside Reading, cosying up to the Microsofts and the Oracles in Winnersh Triangle. Our meeting, like many others, was friendly enough. There were plenty of encouraging well dones when we discussed the glitterati, which made up our client list.

Answering significantly more financial questions was part of their process, building a more comprehensive picture of our business than we’d experienced before. One of the three quietly tapped away on his laptop, while the other two conversed. Nothing was decided there and then, but the temperature seemed to be cooling towards the end. We found out why a few days later.

Not trusting the humans in the room, fortunately, their watertight system, which was controlled by some innovative programme, highlighted one significant weakness in our business. We had next to no assets on the balance sheet, which made us a significant high-risk proposition they couldn’t invest in.

This is laughable if you’re a bank looking for start-up action, which they professed to be doing. Why bother with such a high bar if you’re looking for early stage investment and why does it take three people, when their skills as bankers were never needed?

A balance sheet typically identifies company cash, accounts receivable, short-term investments, and liabilities such as property and machinery. A rapidly growing software start-up is very unlikely to have a healthy balance sheet. All the cash from sales is spent on the growing number of employees, further developing and selling the products to even more customers.

That’s why we needed a bank which wanted to join us on the journey. Our two offices were rented, (there was an office in Stirling for our software engineers), any cars were on finance, cash went out as fast as it came in, creating a delicate balancing act until we could find a much bigger overdraft or an investor.

While Alistair’s rolodex was nowhere near as extensive as Gordon’s, he’d still worked in automotive since he was 16, which meant plenty of connections over the years. One of the reasons we didn’t take any of those first investment offers was because he’d already started a conversation with Angela. She’d been in the news and he knew her.

Angela was a well-known personality in automotive circles and not just because she was a rare female leader in the industry. She’d been the Managing Director of EMaC for 12 years, before she completed her sale having built the company into the UK market leader of pre-sold customer service plans.

Angela did us two big favours, the first of which was introducing us to Hamish**, who’d been instrumental in her deal. Hamish finally solved our cashflow problem when he introduced us to Santander Bank and their regional corporate finance team.

The deal didn’t happen overnight, it took months. They decided they liked the business, but as you might expect, they wanted a better understanding of the business, particularly our contracts, typically 12-month rolling ones. Given that this was a relatively short period, they also wanted to understand how much churn occurred.

Typically, it was pretty rare for a dealer to be counting down the days to the end of their contract. Those that did, were either not using the service, often because of other issues, or a competitor was trying to discount their new video solution heavily, provided the dealer signed up for their vehicle health check software. As usual, there was never a free lunch.

We made our contract a rolling one, because dealers didn’t want to be bothered with them. There was also a 90-day notice period, so we at least had a chance to discuss any problem and could try to resolve it, if someone wanted to cancel. In the earlier days, the biggest issue was always lack of use. Before the situation escalated, it was easy to predict where we needed to try and sell a training day or two.

I can’t remember exactly how much Santander lent us the first time. It was over £1m and the interest rate was 10%, plus management fees, lumps which suddenly seemed less significant once all that cash was deposited in our account. Hamish also anticipated the balance sheet objection, which was only resolved when Angela came on board as our first significant investor.

Finally we had something tangible, beyond our monthly revenue and average revenue per user (ARPU) - a lot more cash and a shiny new shareholder with lots of automotive experience. Of course, I also hoped she would exert her charms to help keep our CEO firmly in check.

I first met her at a trade show after she’d sold her company. Alistair had arranged it at my request, as by then, she’d expressed an interest in our business, Hamish was looking at a possible deal, and Alistair was beginning to chase. Aside from that unwelcome action, she felt comfortable in automotive and, of course, our customers were the same ones she’d had.

My meeting felt slightly strained, but I probably hadn’t been introduced as the best thing since sliced bread. Alistair had kept this relationship away from the board, as he had with Hamish and Santander until he couldn’t any longer. It would have looked odd and the bank had already requested a meeting with me and Donna.

I met Angela on her old companies stand. We didn’t have long, and our chat was competing with the noisy surroundings. It ended up being little more than a brief introduction. But that was okay. The ice had been broken. It was clear that she’d worked hard to achieve her success. Putting her cash on the line was a fantastic vote of confidence. We hoped to give her a healthy return and plenty of opportunity to be as activeas she wanted to be. Some of us were certainly listening.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**Hamish Morrison is the joint CEO of BHP, an accountancy firm in Leeds. Hamish’s specialism is corporate finance, and I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me mentioning that here.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

The search for cash never went away until we finally did a deal with Santander. For much of our journey, banks had been a disappointment. Like Goldilocks and the Three Bears, we were either too big or too small. When we were small, the only sensible overdraft we could negotiate, let’s be honest, there was no negotiation, was a secured loan with not one but two shareholders’ houses sitting plumply on the signed paperwork.

Every meaningful discussion with a bank seemed to include a feigned reluctance to take charge of a property, especially one any children called home.

But my hands are tied, if you really want to do this, these are the terms of the overdraft agreement.

It seemed essential to turn up suited and booted with a 5-10 minute presentation about the company, with plenty of car manufacturer logos on our laptop or printout, which we knew the bank manager would recognise. But it was still a tickbox exercise with a few questions from them, thrown in to show willing and get us to the point of the meeting. They weren’t qualified to determine how sound the business was or would be, so they reverted to a belt and braces approach and took any guesswork out of the decision-making process by asking for security - houses would have to do. Somewhere in their training manual was a reminder that 90% of all new businesses fail. So as a business owner, any argument for cash, outside the well-beaten pathways of there not being enough, had better be compelling.

We continued to receive our fair share of rejections. It was as much a reflection of the junior audiences we could attract at the bank, and not because our business wasn’t worth investment, albeit with risk attached, too uncomfortable for most.

Not long after our big UK breakthrough with BMW, we were turned down again, even with a healthy burgeoning order book. I can’t remember which bank. I want to think it was HSBC, who did at one point, sack us off because the computer literally did say NO. That was the reason they gave anyway.

We were caught scrambling as a result, because we could get no credit from the hardware distributors supplying us the Apple iPods. Having to pay cash upfront, more often than we liked, was causing problems. This despite most BMW dealers being prompt payers on shortened 14-day terms for the CitNOW kits we supplied with a day’s training.

It was galling. The phones were now ringing, not with new sales enquiries, although they were increasing; it was more likely because BMW and Mini dealers were chasing us to find out when their hardware and trainer would arrive. Suddenly, we were experiencing something utterly novel to us - pent-up demand.

Inevitably, we spent too long on high street credit. In the end, out of frustration and because we were over trading, we started looking around for an investor. We immediately bumped into that old nursery rhyme again, the Goldilocks principle - the idea that something is best when it’s not too big or too small, but just the right size.

We were looking for an investment somewhere between £350,000 - £500,000. Significantly higher than our overdraft facility, (about £100,000) but not enough to excite that many investors. Angel investors do exist at this level, although many prefer the bigger leagues, with the promise of more stable returns and fewer failures. Angels can quickly burn through four or five company failures before they get a winner. Yet they apply the same processes to every opportunity to try and ensure a better success rate with fewer duffers.

We, or more accurately, Alistair, met with at least three interested parties. Others never accepted an invitation to meet after seeing our introductory pack. Like the banks, rejection is expected and isn’t necessarily a reflection on the business. The ones that requested meetings typically had a good experience with something automotive or software as a service (SAAS). Or maybe they had a case of FOMO (fear of missing out), we looked that good on paper.

Unlike the banks, investors are more likely to know what they want. Without the security of an asset like your house, the due diligence process is significantly longer, and there are many more hoops to jump through. Any offers, even for a relatively small amount of capital, are conditional on a significant stake in the business, 20-25% is not unusual, often with a seat on the board.

The meeting went very well with the investor who turned up in a racing green, two-seater Jaguar soft-top. He actually wasn’t the principal investor. He worked on behalf of some high network individual, and between them, they ran an investment company.

I thought he was smart for no other reason than that he was prepared to take the time to visit our offices in Wokingham and have a couple of hours with the board rather than listen to Alistair blathering. Nothing was particularly formal, no stilted presentations. He saw it more as an opportunity to say hello and ask questions. Maybe he wanted to see whether he liked our vibe. Could he work with us? It certainly allowed him to play dumb, listen to what we had to say, add a bit more colour to the numbers and potentially pick up on any red flags.

While many might see the addition of an investor to the board as a significant drawback, Donna and I definitely didn’t for all the obvious reasons**.

In the end, three companies made offers, which were all a little bit too greedy for our liking. At the same time, we also become aware of a potentially friendlier face, who had recently sold a very successful automotive business and might now be looking for a new investment opportunity.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

** If you're wondering what reasons I’m talking about, you need to read previous chapters.

CitNOW was founded by Andrew Howells and Donna Barradale in 2005, although the company was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company. It has been sold again since.

With the successful launch of two CitNOW automotive apps in the UK, there was a sense that much of the hard work might have been done. It was difficult to ignore that many dealer groups, especially those with German brands on their forecourts, were using both apps. Nissan had mandated Workshop, and plenty of other groups without German support were now using CitNOW across their sites as well.

Volvo was the only significant manufacturer where we struggled to establish a presence. They eventually endorsed Autos on Show, which didn’t mean very much. Honda, ironically, had become another laggard, with little interest and certainly no manufacturer engagement**.

Once we reached this position in the UK, which reminds me of a climbing Everest graphic we used one year, to depict our forecasted annual growth to the company from base camp upwards, there were really only two routes to go.

We could continue to focus on our home market and consolidate our position as the leading automotive video solution. Sales from the two existing apps would continue to come in, as we had people on the ground now, and the phone did ring more often, providing a steady stream of leads.

Typically, they wouldn’t necessarily be the most exciting enquiries. Often, it would be an independent dealer who had heard about the service through a conversation. It’s a surprisingly tight-knit industry, with dealers frequently sharing their experiences, good and bad. I want to think we treated every enquiry with the same respect and interest that would have been given to a bigger entity.

Our proactive selling efforts were always focused on Automotive Management’s (AMs)*** top 100 dealer groups, which are updated annually based on turnover and the definitive prospect list for most third-party suppliers.

It was clear that there were still many unfulfilled opportunities in the UK, whether it was groups we hadn’t reached with our existing services or potentially new applications yet to be tested.

One completely untouched market was body shops, for instance. Repairing damaged vehicles was crying out for quality diagnostic videos to help communication within the industry—body shop to the insurer and back—plus progress and upselling videos for customers.

If your vehicle needed bodywork repair after an accident, a smart process was to point out any other dents and scratches and offer to repair those at the same time as the insurance work for a discounted additional cost.

After two fantastic years of selling Workshop almost unchallenged, we began to lose sales and renewals to the eVHC**** providers who had by now developed their own video solutions. Even though we had integrations with these providers, we didn’t have our own eVHC solution. We would have needed to create our own software or buy one of the existing companies, which we couldn’t afford. (That finally happened after CitNOW was sold. Tenzing, the PE house, had much deeper pockets).

I want to stop writing a list to avoid this starting to read like a boring old business plan. The point is, the list of UK opportunities was extensive, and a perfectly sensible approach would have been to realise some of them at the expense of doing anything else.

One wise decision we finally made was to stop chasing business that wasn’t from the automotive sector.

During our short history, we had already sold to boatyards, campsites selling holiday homes, and even engineering services that needed a visual record of work undertaken. It wasn’t that we couldn’t obtain a monthly licence fee, but there were nearly always new requests to change the software to better suit the new use. Enhancements were already a bottleneck for our core business. The cash was never significant enough, so we simply stopped doing it.

It was a tough lesson, saying no to a sale. A decision we’d put off many times. But it was also part of growing up and embracing the fact that we were an automotive software business and only that. The market was more than big enough to accommodate everyone’s aspirations.

Our second choice was to export, and you’ve already read about the initial disasters we had with Germany and Japan.

The reality was we lacked any real strategic direction. There were plenty of boardroom opinions, none louder than the CEOs’, and we were blessed with too many opportunities. It was easier not to make a defining decision. Instead, we chose both routes, greedy for more success. The result was we didn’t do any of it particularly well, leaping headlong into half-baked hunches, investing more cash we could ill afford to lose.

In the end, though, it would have been almost impossible to ignore the opportunity in mainland Europe, although that might be the salesman in me talking.

Part of our UK success was definitely because we’d effectively been first and used that advantage to the best effect. While Autos on Show focused on an expensive turntable solution, with a camera and cables for car listings on websites, CitNOW was selling two easy-to-use apps unopposed. This led to manufacturer buy-in and significant exposure to many of the big franchised groups in that long AM list.

I don’t remember BMW, via Alistair, ever saying you need to be in our home market, although you might easily have reached that conclusion because of the UK success story. But one manufacturer definitely did put their hand up, and that was Volkswagen in Italy.

Dealers talk, and so do manufacturers. Volkswagen UK had done a fantastic job of embracing and supporting CitNOW. Their UK dealers had all seen what we had to offer and many signed up to a Volkswagen specific offer. But our high coverage wasn’t just about price. It was also achieved through the regional support of their managers, who reminded and cajoled any laggards.

With such an endorsement, it wasn’t surprising that other markets, aware of what Volkswagen UK was doing, started to enquire.

How do you say no to that? I don’t think you can. The only strategy we really knew was to be first, and now Volkswagen wanted talks in Italy where we could be first all over again.

We’d also learnt some expensive lessons from Japan and Germany, so this time, we put an adult in charge and changed the country to Italy.

*CitNOW was our company’s trade name before we sold it in 2018.

**The irony with Honda is that the ex-Marketing Director had been the inspiration years earlier. All the early experimentation had been with Honda Holdcroft in Stoke-on-Trent.

***Automotive Management, owned by Bauer Media, is an essential read for the automotive retail industry. Much of our marketing spend went to this publication, which organised many industry forums, attracting the dealers and groups we wanted to meet.

****eVHC, electronic vehicle health check - software developed to integrate the process of servicing and repairing a vehicle with a dealership's parts and accounts department. Customer reports were also generated, which started to include video.