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How we built a business out of recession — chapter 24 — a series of unfortunate events
The story of CitNOW*
This is the 24th chapter about CitNOW, the company started from a kitchen table in Winnersh, Berkshire. If you’d like to read from the beginning, here’s a link to chpt 1. Each chapter is a 5-minute read. It’s an early draft of a book.
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.
Running my own business was the best choice I could ever make. But I was biased. Watching my father’s experiences with Unilever in the 1960s — 70s growing up gave me a healthy disregard for other people’s businesses, which was only confirmed further when I left university and entered the job market. I soon realised that working for others was mostly a mug’s game. Poorly run and poorly managed companies seemed to be typical. Not all of them were small and insignificant either. I was happy to put up with them, for a while at least, believing that I could certainly do better.
The one exception was Alan at Sony. He was a great boss. Not only did he hire me out of the food industry — thank god; he did it despite pressure to hire internally. He was a…
