Monday 14th February 2005
Why I turned down £2m
At a critical time in her business' development, Ali Gill turned down a £2 million offer of investment. But for the former Olympic rower, this situation provided her with just the incentive to accelerate growth.In 1996, Ali Gill broke the world record in the Great Britain women’s eight. A few weeks later, the crew failed to make the Olympic final in Atlanta. It was a soul-destroying experience for Gill.‘We should definitely have had a medal,’ she says, ‘but as a crew we never really had a strong bond. We were held together by performance, rather than getting on and working with each other. Once we broke the world record, we never worked out how to take it to the next step. Once it started to go badly, it was a crew that ate itself up.’ She adds: ‘In the eight, we had exceptionally good leadership, but appalling management. When you are working with peak performers, they think they know what they are doing. You need really strong characters to create a sense of direction.’ Looking back, Gill wonders whether she could have done more. ‘I had been on the team for some time. I’m not saying that I could have turned it round, but I didn’t have those difficult conversations to get the support needed to make a change.’
Peak performance
Gill had no intention of repeating such an experience in her professional life. As a psychologist, she specialises in getting the best out of people. By the late 90s she was earning six figures advising investment banks on leadership development, but was surprised at how little use was being made of technology in managing talent. So in 2000 she teamed up with fellow rower, Steve Bicknell, to create Getfeedback. The idea was to combine his online expertise with her HR skills to help put the right people in the right jobs and to develop them properly. Both she and Bicknell gave up their jobs, put in £50,000 and spent a year building a system for managing talent. With skills from opposite ends of the spectrum, they proved to be a perfect mix. And after starting out as acquaintances, they also became life partners during the course of the year.
Turning down £2 million
They then reached a critical point. ‘We realised we were actually competing against giants who had been in business for a quarter of a century with large-scale backing,’ says Gill. ‘We knew we were a long way up the curve. Was it worth selling what we had? Or should we find an investor? Or should we stick it out and grow organically?’ As they soon found out, they were too late to sell the technology, as competitors were starting to invest in their own systems. But they did have three offers from private investors and venture capitalists, looking to put £2 million into the business. But the conditions were steep. ‘We would have had to give up 70 per cent of the equity and sign into the business for five years. It was a tough call. We were sitting on a year’s worth of business and our pipeline was probably about £250,000. We knew we had good technology and a good product, but we were a long way off having a business,’ recalls Gill. Both she and Bicknell considered what the injection of cash could bring to the business, and also wrestled with their commitment. ‘We looked at each other and did the maths. If we really believed in what we had, we could actually have a business of significant value. That was our big decision. We chose to go on our own, although I was probably more attracted to the £2 million than Steve. I thought with that kind of money we could move so much faster.’
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