Data Cubed is 5!

By Helen Tanner – Founder @ Data3 and BoomBoard

It’s our birthday and we’re five years old. We’ve grown from a one-woman band to a global group of 20+ data experts who have delivered 80+ data projects for 50+ businesses. Was it easy? Hell no. Let me tell you a little story…

YEAR 1 – 2017-2018

Once upon a time there was an eternally discontented corporate type looking for a better work-life balance. “I’ll set up my own business, be the master of my own destiny, have loads of fun, take loads of time off, and make loads of money” she stated as she ran out of the door of the office. Bless her…

So, back in 2017, I set up a new business called Data3. It was me…just me….on my lonesome…with a business name and a laptop. In year 1, I was a contractor on a day rate, rather than a business. I found some clients, did some data consultancy work, was paid to travel all over the world, had loads of spare time to go to the gym…it was a fun year. Why didn’t I do this sooner?!

And the business made a nice profit…which burned a little hole in my pocket.

YEAR 2 – 2018-2019

What do you do with cash in your business bank account? Pay yourself lots of dividends and put your feet up? Nah. You invest it and grow the business.

So, I employed people. Amazing super-talented people that could do fantastic things. But I totally under-estimated how hard it is to sell a service, delivered via a team, as opposed to me selling myself, as an individual, on a day rate. I was also a novice salesperson, so I was on a steep learning curve.

I also underestimated the importance of having a super simple offering for clients. So, I tried to sell data services, data solutions, anything data…to anyone…to everyone! It didn’t work too well, of course. But we bounced along making ends meet, working for fantastic clients and doing some truly fun data projects.

YEAR 3 2019-2020

I had an epiphany…inspired by my friend and business muse Warren, I realised that whilst we were mainly serving SMEs, every business needed our help to transform their disconnected data into a single source of truth. Every business should be able to check on their business like they’d check on the weather. Yet small businesses, start-ups, and scale-ups, can’t afford our ever-so-reasonable data consultancy fees. So, I decided to build a product specifically for these businesses which can automatically connect all their usual data sources (Xero, Quickbooks, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Zoho, Google Analytics, and the rest) and create instant dashboards and business benchmarking tools. 

So, we reinvested our data consultancy profits into building BoomBoard (working title myDATA3) – the only business tool to give you instant dashboards and benchmarking to make smarter, quicker data-driven decisions. Which took way longer, and cost way more money than I expected, of course.

And then I was running two businesses, as a solo founder, and bootstrapped…

YEAR 4 2020-2021

We finally nailed our customer offerings and became super clear and laser-focused about what we do for our clients. It only took 4 years…

We launched a data consultancy service called Discovery & Design – in 4 weeks, we run a data audit, facilitate business requirement workshops, compare & contrast all the tech solutions, and create a fully-costed implementation plan for our clients. And they loved it! It’s easy to explain, easy to sell, and the client feedback has been universally amazing. It’s the first part of our 4-step solution starting with (1) Discovery (2) Design (3) Build, where we set up technology stacks, data warehouses & dashboards and (4) Support, where we provide on-demand support as an extension to the in-house team. Why did it take us so long to get here?

With our customer offering nailed down, we recruited the next phase of Data Cubers to grow the business.

YEAR 5 2021-2022

Now we’re rolling…

Our data consultancy business is flying. Finally, we have a scalable data consultancy offering. And super happy clients coming back for more and more. And a happy team building robust, secure, data solutions. 

We’ve launched our business dashboard product BoomBoard – for an instant overview of your business performance so you can uncover opportunities and make better decisions. For that feeling when your business makes sense…Boom! So, businesses can finally check their business performance like they’d check the weather.

And we’ve launched our first global operation with Data3 New Zealand, covering NZ and Australia businesses.

Plus, we have the most amazing team of super talented data experts you’ll ever meet – data architects, data engineers, data analysts, BI developers, plus the operations and commercial team backing them all up. And they’re all super lovely too…the type of people you’d want to have a beer or a cuppa with.

YEARS 6+ ?

What’s coming next? HUGE things. We have big hairy audacious goals in the form of a neatly packaged Business Growth Plan, including:

  • Scaling the UK data consultancy business
  • Launching BoomBoard to SMEs and start-ups/scale-ups
  • Expanding into Europe, and beyond

WE NEED YOU

Wanna help us on our journey? We’re always on the lookout for good people who want to do great things. Check out our jobs page, connect with me on LinkedIn, or drop us a line at hello@data-cubed.co.uk