Steve Purdham shares his tips for the top
TECHNOLOGY entrepreneur Steve Purdham outlined his secrets of success at a dinner in Manchester last night.
Mr Purdham, who was speaking at an event hosted by Knutsford financial adviser Clarion and Stockport accountant Hurst, sold the digital music service WE7 to Tesco for £11m in June.
He set up the business with former Genesis front man Peter Gabriel and held about 12% of the shares. The deal came five years after he sold Congleton-based web security firm Surfcontrol for £204m to Websense.
He conceded WE7 had been a struggle and took five years to work. He said Peter Gabriel was a, “superstar, he’s an entrepreneur. He has this fantastic ability to make things work really well.” He described the music business as “irrationally seductive” because “it doesn’t work on normal terms”.
Mr Purdham, who grew up in the North East but now lives in Cheshire, said his career in business had taught him the importance of four things: Focus, people, marketing and passion.
“Focus is one of the hardest things to deliver but if you get it right, laser sharp, it’s always the best of times because in that situation the people around you understand what’s expected and they help you get where you want to be.”
He said it was essential a business has the right people at the right time, “and that includes you”. He admitted he was bored at one time at Surfcontrol when he spent most of his time analysing spread sheets. “I realised if I moved 20 engineers to China my EBIT (earnings before interest and tax) would go up by 0.01% and my investors would say, ‘well done Steve’. I wasn’t interested in that.”
On marketing he said: “The power of marketing is such that great products with no or poor marketing fail. But if you’ve got really poor products but great marketing it can work exceptionally well. If you’ve got great products and really great marketing that’s when the magic really starts to happen.”
He admitted that he once believed that marketing people were failed sales people and when he was made marketing director at one stage in his career he walked out saying, “I’m not a failure!” But when he got home he, “had a few cups of tea and a paracetamol and realised I didn’t know what marketing was.” He described passion as, “the single biggest thing an entrepreneur has in their toolkit”.
As part of the deal with Tesco Mr Purdham will work with the supermarket until Christmas, and he was tight-lipped on his future plans, although he did say 3D printers were the technology he was most excited about.
“I’ve made a commitment and I’m there until the end of the year. After that I’ll go to B&Q and wander around until I realise there’s more to life. Something will happen, someone will call me.”
