A Year In The Making

John Dente - Founder & CTO

Our story from day 1 to day 365...

It all started when I realised that there was a better way and having gathered a great team with a fantastic unity and great work ethic. Starting from scratch turned out to be the right move. I was fortunate that two trusted former colleagues came on board at just the right time . Their involvement was instrumental in helping us gain early momentum.

Within just two weeks, we had already identified the essentials: securing our ISO accreditations, putting the right insurance in place, and establishing the expected website and branding. So, with a mix of hired meeting rooms and the occasional café with endless coffee refills, we got to work.

Soon after we had our next employee to help spread the message and take meetings with potential clients. 

Our first win inside 4 weeks of starting was actually in Dublin Ireland and we started on that project within 8 weeks. 

We soon started to look for office space and that took longer than winning the next project.  All with the fantastic support still in the background encouraging me to make it work.   (This took 6 months to find a suitable space that would allow us to expand and solicitors make leases difficult).

Fun Times

It can’t be all hard work, so I took the team to Thorpe Park and even sprung for fast passes for all to Hyperia (yes I am still young enough at heart to enjoy it despite being in my 60’s now) .

We took up 6 rows on Stealth, all shared the largest KFC order I have ever bought and a few drinks later in the day.   Chris Dyke from Allied Telesis came and joined us in the afternoon.

Steady Growth

It took 11 months to reach 12 full time employees and in that process we built a brand new software platform and did a soft launch at the Smart Building Show in October 2024

It now has live subscribers and launches its next version very soon.  I have a real respect for the two developers that achived this and embraced AI tools to speed the development along,  we named it HUBi in a local Costa coffee (office lease not signed then but in progress).

During all this we completed onboarding with some major clients and have been delivering projects and platform at an ever increasing rate and that will lead to an expansion in staff in the coming months.

Web Summit

We attended and exhibited at our first web summit.  The event is huge and has space outside the main halls for Wine summit (we had to try that in the sun of Lisbon) and the evenings are filled with Night Summit which is an assault on the senses and liver.  More networking was done at Night Summit than the day time meetings and exhibition space.

Finally, an Office

Having an office which we took on 1st October 2024 was a major steping stone and whilst not used every day we do use it to collaborate and keep our humour intact – we even added a dartboard,  not that any of us will be the next Luke Littler but an office should not all be work.

We have space to build a meeting room and even have another desk or 2 as well.  Our first purchase included temporary chairs and a table to provide immediate functionality while waiting for the delivery of the permanent desks and office chairs. This was followed by essential kitchen equipment, including a bean-to-cup coffee machine and a fridge, to support daily team needs and comfort.

A Peek at the Future

Our Hubi platform is gaining wider traction and we have an exciting year ahead,  we have installed and got working our own local LLM being trained for FDD and data analytics specifically for our platform.   We complete delivery of the first project in April 2025 and we are now delivering multiple projects, we expect to grow in size by 4 staff in the UK and additional person in Dublin, we look forward to setting up our own entity there as well and having an Irish presence.