Data software specialists Configur has appointed a non-executive advisor as it targets a £10 million valuation within the next 12-18 months.
The Newport-based start-up, which was founded by Marco Oliver and Josh Evans in 2019, has appointed award-winning entrepreneur James Taylor to support its strategic growth plans.
Taylor, who founded child development organisation Superstars with seed capital of just £1000 and scaled it to a company employing over 100 employees, has been working with Configur’s founders since the start of the year to scale-up its growth.
Having spent the last 18 months developing its platform to allow businesses to easily store, secure and share its data to empower collaboration and data-driven decisions, Configur’s founders now have rapid growth plans in place for the next three years.
The business has already grown by 40% since the start of 2022 and is on track for over 200% growth by the end of the year.
Having had experience of starting and scaling a business, Taylor, who previously won IoD UK Director of the Year, is helping Configur’s founders to develop and implement strategic and tactical planning across the entire business.
After meeting while working together at multi award-winning intelligent automation company, Configur’s founders realised there was a gap in the market for a platform that easily connects business data to drive insights, at an affordable price point.
The duo bootstrapped the business in its first year, before raising £220k seed funding. It has since grown to a team of nine staff and is working with UK clients of all sizes across 12 different sectors.
On appointing James, Configur’s co-founder Marco Oliver, said: “Having met James through BeTheSpark and hearing how he grew SuperStars, we knew his experience of scaling a business would be hugely beneficial to us as we embark on our growth plans. We’re delighted that he’s joined us in an advisory capacity. He’s already helped us get the foundations in place to grow the business and we’re excited to have him on board for the next stage of our journey.”
Having exited the day-to-day running of Superstars, yet retained his shareholding, Taylor is now working with a portfolio of businesses in an advisory role. On working with Configur, he said: “When I look to work with a business, I look for three things. People, Product and Potential. Do I believe in the people behind the business, and could I work well with them? Can I be passionate about the product and is it a business that can be significantly scaled? On chatting with Josh and Marco, they were ticking all my boxes!
“When you establish a business, you don’t know, what you don’t know, but having scaled a business myself, I now understand what you need to achieve growth. I’m looking forward to using my experience to help Josh and Marco put the right things in place to scale Configur. With triple digit growth on track for this year, it’s an exciting time to be involved.”
