How we built a business out of recession — chapter 42 — the reckoning begins

The story of CitNOW*

This is the 42nd 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.

Photo by Josh Appel on Unsplash

With the company’s natural evolution, we had moved from a regular quorum of four shareholders meeting at Hogarth’s Hotel in Solihull to a much flabbier melange of senior managers and non-execs, with some shareholders in attendance.

The meetings were usually helpful, as was catching up the night before the board meeting, as people travelled in. Over time, as the company grew, they naturally became more serious; there were fewer gatherings, and even less as 2016 progressed.

Our pinch point was fast approaching as a poor new business January carried on into February and March. It wasn’t long before we were discussing a poor quarter’s results rather than the month. Before long, we were talking about the half-year figures, with no meaningful…