Spare room to multi-million pound global tech company with a Queen’s Award for Innovation with Susanna Lawson

.”You have to invest in Marketing because unless anyone knows about what you’re doing, there’s no point.”

Key Takeaways

• The Queen’s award gave the company a lot of PR, an invitation to speak in a magazine, a lot of kudos and the company became known.
• You don’t have to be a techie to be a tech founder.
• There’s lots of different ways to bring a tech solution to market. It doesn’t have to be you as the developer, you just want somebody needs the idea
• For anybody thinking of taking their idea and turning it into a tech product, make sure that you have diverse experiences and bring together complementary skills rather than try and find somebody to work with that matches your skill set.
• You have to invest in Marketing because unless anyone knows about it, there is no point.
• There are big sacrifices you have to make when you run your own business, it’s like having a baby, you have to feed and nurture it. You can’t just leave it alone and it’s important to have friends and people in your network that understand what you’re going through
• As you grow, the people that started the business with you aren’t necessarily the people that are going to take you to the next stage.
• Put processes in at the beginning so you can ramp up much faster
• When recruiting you need to recruit skills but also behaviors.

3 questions you need to consider when hiring a team/person

• Are you hiring somebody to take some of the workload off you?
• Are you hiring somebody that might look like for you?
• Are you looking for somebody who’s got skills that you don’t have?

Mentioned Links and References:

Mentioned Links and References:

About Susanna Lawson:

Susanna Lawson started her career as a psychology graduate from the University of Manchester, and went on to work with adults with learning difficulties. Susanna then had to complete a NVQ in care to prove her practical competencies – and her involvement in vocational training began.

After completing her NVQ levels 2 and 3, she soon moved up the ranks, and was appointed the National Contract Manager for an independent training provider, responsible for over 1,000 apprentices across the UK. Throughout her journey she witnessed huge inefficiencies at every stage of the sector, and decided with her partner to build a solution: OneFile.

OneFile has developed from an idea into the leading eportfolio software in the education sector. OneFile has grown from a 2 person, back bedroom start up to over 80 staff and with over 1.3m users from the States to the Middle East.

Susanna Lawson is an ambassador for the international vocational training community, delivering presentations at the Transatlantic Apprenticeship Exchange Forum and the American Association of Colleges’ national conference. After graduating from the prestigious Goldman Sachs 10ksb undergraduate and ambassador business programme she was asked to be mentor on the Santander Breakthrough in Business programme, mentoring other SMEs on the challenges they were facing.

Amongst many other awards, Onefile was awarded the Queens Award for Innovation in 2017 and won CIPD People Management Initiative in 2019. Susanna personally has won Forward Ladies/HSBC Business Woman of the Year and EVAs/Natwest Outstanding Achievement.

OneFile Ltd Overview:

OneFile is more than a software company. They give people the tools to shape their own future, reach their potential and be the best they can be.  They believe that when people have the tools to learn in a way that suits them and apply their knowledge in the workplace, learning is more engaging.

Learning becomes part of everyday life, so everyone is learning for their future. That’s why they created OneFile, to give people the tools to learn – no matter where they’re from or where they’re going.