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How we built a business out of recession — chapter 34 — sales people always say yes
The story of CitNOW*
This is the 34th 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 it was only registered in 2008. In February 2018, we sold the company to Tenzing, a UK private equity company, and it has been sold again since.
There wasn’t a neat business plan with 5-year cash flow projections when we started the business. It had morphed out of a consultancy, so the numbers on the spreadsheet were genuine as we continued to do what we did. Nothing much was written down, which wasn’t an aversion to planning but more a reaction to our situation. We were already running a business, and our research and future direction were primarily dictated by our experiences with a few dozen car dealers.
As a result, our first two years reflected the consultancy and the work done for Honda’s TV channel, with a small but vital contribution coming from what would soon become a software development business called CitNOW.
