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We spoke to Dominic Bonaker, founder and CEO of Odyssey, about what inspired him to start his own company.
Transcript
Sara Jones: Hello, I'm Sara. I'm a Campaigns Manager at Companies House and with me today is Dominic Bonaker. He's the CEO of Odyssey, which is a web design agency in Cardiff. And we're going to be talking about young entrepreneurship and his company today for our new #GetBizzy campaign. So thank you for joining us.
Dominic Bonaker: Thank you for having me.
SJ: Let's just start by you telling me a little bit more about you and your company.
DB: Yeah, so, my name is Dominic. I'm 23 years old and I’m the founder and CEO of Odyssey. As you said, we are a web agency based in Cardiff and we work with our clients to help them look better online. Whether that's a new website, whether it's a new shop and anything else on the web.
SJ: Okay. So what inspired you to actually start your company? Why did you decide to go off on your own?
DB: To be honest, I think it was because I couldn’t really work for anyone else. I was very kind of self-driven. I was very self-motivated and I didn't really like being told what to do a lot of the time. Especially when I knew that there was a better, or quicker, or faster or cheaper way of doing things. I felt that we were doing things because that's what we were told to do, and I didn’t like that.
So one thing that we try and incorporate into our business is that I don't think I'm any better than any of the employees. If they've got a great idea then they can bring it to me, and we can make it happen. We're not guided by these fixed guidelines at all.
SJ: Okay, and this isn't the first company that you've actually started is it? Tell me a little bit more about it?
DB: Okay, so, going back a little bit. So, the first company was set up in my first year of university and I thought ‘okay, I'm going to start a company and that's it, sorted, all done’. That's not actually the case. There were certain requirements that I had to do as the director of the company, and I didn't really feel all that comfortable doing it back then. I had a lot of commitments with the university and some other things as well. So I just decided that I was going to close that company down and I was going to focus back on my studies a lot more.
In my final year of university, I knew that this was more what I wanted to do. I went to a few job interviews and didn't really like them. I didn't really like what they were trying to achieve and what they were trying to get out of me and that's not what I wanted to do. So I registered another company. I decided to call it Tech Tailors back then and that was the original company. Then as we grew we decided that we kind of outgrew that name. It was very much where we started so we decided to change it with Companies House.
So we're now called Odyssey. So we trade as Odyssey and Odyssey literally translates into journey. So it's all about that journey, from taking a client from nowhere to a beautiful website or improving their website or whatever that looks like to them.
SJ: Cool. Okay. So did you have any particular support from anyone? You know funders, investors, or maybe it was like an entrepreneurial body. Did you get any help?
DB: So I think when we first started out it was very much, we were very alone, because it was just me by myself starting out. I didn't really know what was out there in terms of other help or other organisations that were available. I did feel a little bit isolated in that respect. But then when it came to it, it was going online, googling, seeing what networking events were coming up, seeing what support there was out there and there's so much around that you just don't even see on a regular basis. And that was one thing that really did kind of boost the company. Just kind of going out there and just meeting new people, seeing what help we can receive and just going from there.
SJ: Okay, so obviously you're a