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edozo moves fast to identify multi-million pound revenue pipelines

27 April 2017

The article at a glance

edozo CEO Marcus Ginn has some straightforward advice for entrepreneurs: “An entrepreneur is someone who gets things done. So set milestones, put …

cityscape and technology and network connection concept

edozo CEO Marcus Ginn has some straightforward advice for entrepreneurs: “An entrepreneur is someone who gets things done. So set milestones, put a rocket under yourself and move fast.”

Speaking from edozo’s offices in London’s prestigious Kensington, Marcus is in the midst of raising investment for an early stage growth round. Fresh from meetings with City VCs, the need for speed is, he believes, critical. “After a slow couple of years bootstrapping it all, my co-founder and I found the resources to make substantial investment in edozo in 2016. Now we’ve really taken hold of the company, it is all happening. We’re past jog, into a canter and getting ready for the sprint.”

Growing the value of the global commercial property sector

edozo is in the commercial property space, specialising in data sharing and storage that underpins the sales, leasing and rental of office blocks, hotels, shops and warehouses. While edozo’s core product is data management software, the benefit goes far beyond efficient workflow. edozo dashboards and data help clients identify new, revenue-generating opportunities. “In general, the commercial property sector still uses Excel spreadsheets to record and store data. When clients convert to edozo, the data collection and tracking our software enables simplifies the sharing of information inside and outside the company, something that’s key in the sector. We also regularly identify new multi-million pound revenue pipelines for our clients,” explains Marcus. “We contribute to their profitability and are helping to grow the value of the sector as a whole”. For a startup that soft-launched in the summer of 2015, that’s quite an achievement: the commercial property sector already has a global valuation of round $30 trillion.

Success is doing one thing beautifully

edozo is Marcus’s second startup. For a while, he was running a property services company with hundreds of employees at the same time as trying to start up another, this time, tech-based business. Looking back, Marcus admits that “spinning too many plates” was one reason edozo initially progressed less rapidly than he would have liked. Now he’s handed over the management of the property services business, Marcus can focus 100 per cent on edozo. And that currently means a commitment of up to 90 hours a week. “I’ve learnt not to multi-task. Success is doing one thing beautifully.”

Marcus had significant experience of being a CEO, regularly hitting seven figure annual turnovers, as the idea for his next venture started to take shape. Despite his success in the services sector, he felt he was heading into unchartered territory with a disruptive and tech-based startup. Cambridge Judge Business School’s Postgraduate Diploma in Entrepreneurship seemed to offer a safe way to stress test the concept. Marcus recalls: “I went into the diploma with a clear idea of the problem and our solution, but was thinking – What do I know? By the end of the year, I felt much more confident about starting a technology business. I was better equipped. I understood the start-up landscape. I had made contact with well-known, successful entrepreneurs. I came out of the PGDE believing that anything is possible.”

Entrepreneurs just do it

Confidence, believes Marcus, is a core attribute for any entrepreneur, particularly the assurance and energy to get out there and meet your prospective customers. “You need to talk to the big names in your sector. Don’t be afraid to make contact and start the conversation. You’re not selling them the whole package. You’re just asking for a chat over lunch. My advice to any startup is, don’t sit around thinking about it. Move fast and move aggressively. Be ambitious!”

From its beginnings in the vibrant London commercial property market, edozo is scaling up international operations in Hong Kong, Australia and Canada. With this year’s growth round close to completion, Marcus is already building support for a Series A at end of 2018. “I got my first taste of where scale and ambition could take the business on the diploma,” Marcus remembers. “At the time it seemed a bit abstract and I have to admit it rather went in one ear and out the other. Now though, and thanks too to the time I spent on the Accelerate Cambridge programme at Cambridge Judge Business School when I’d completed the diploma, all that conceptual stuff on scaling, valuation and exits that I talked through with my mentors on both programmes is very real. These days I’m completely focused on maximising value for clients and investors and seeking out opportunities to scale.”