When you want to build a tech business from scratch, listen to someone who’s been there, done that, and still wears the t-shirt. Take the advice, for example, of someone who came from a poor council estate, went on to found a multi-million pound company, and who has stayed at the bleeding edge of technology for decades.

At this year’s DIGIT Digital Transformation Summit, that person was Peter Proud, CEO and founder of Forrit, the cloud software developer which counts multinational companies like Microsoft and Tesco Bank among its customers.

When it comes to building a tech business, the main point that Proud pressed home to a packed audience, is the importance of keeping it people-centric at its core. Without the right people to make and sell your product, even the best ideas will fail. Success, at Forrit at least, has been built on the back of that simple concept.

“It’s all about building high performing teams,” said Proud.

Future proofing for growth

At Forrit, said Proud, the goal is to build those teams from the ground up, finding those with a spark of talent, sharing expertise and mentorship while nurturing their abilities, before helping them find a role that they can grow into and take further.

That’s the idea behind Forrit’s apprenticeship scheme, the success of which has obviously given Proud a lot of personal joy. These apprentices come from all over the world, each looking to find their feet in the tech industry, and Proud is more than happy to open the door for them, regardless of their background.

“All I care about is giving talent a chance,” said Proud. “If you give everyone that has talent a chance, then everyone can get involved.”

It’s clearly working. Forrit’s apprenticeship programme already boasts quite a success rate, with eighteen high-performing graduates finding roles in the tech sector, in everything from HR to cloud development to cybersecurity. 

With three current Forrit apprentices sitting in the room, it’s clear how invested Proud and his company are in giving the next generation of talent every opportunity to flourish.

The company benefits too, with Proud admitting that the apprenticeship programme brings in new ideas and perspectives, invigorating projects that need shaken up, and ensuring that Forrit stays at the cutting edge. It’s also led to lower recruitment costs, and much higher loyalty rates, with apprentices more likely to stay with an employer that’s invested in their future from day one.

Instilling the company with an impulse towards social responsibility has boosted Forrit’s reputation, which in turn attracts more fresh talent into the company, developing a pipeline of skilled workers to ensure the firm’s future tech talent needs are met.

It’s not all about developers in hoodies

Those tech talent needs are diverse, said Proud. In getting a product to market, most firms follow a basic model of first developing a concept, then constructing the architecture and building out the product, before submitting it to testing, until finally it can be delivered. 

Every step is vital, but each one needs a host of different skill sets and expertise to get right. There’s a misconception, said Proud, that technology firms are built solely on the backs of those with technical expertise, the developers in hoodies slugging back energy drinks that Hollywood has made almost mythic.

“The code is kind of the smallest bit, and the bit that takes the least amount of time for us,” said Proud. “We built a massive enterprise software product, and you can’t just do that on a couple of people writing code.”

“It needs determination, and having an understanding of how to do the delivery, how to do the paperwork, how to do the documentation, all that stuff, too.”

Organisational agility, as Proud called it, is perhaps the most important trait of a successful business. Having a breadth and depth of skills, all working together with one goal in mind, that’s how a tech company takes an idea from the whiteboard to the market.

Women in STEM – what does it really mean?

Bringing those various perspectives together means bridging the gaps that still exist across the tech sector when it comes to gender, with Proud pointing out that in many areas essential to tech firms, women have often proved to be better than their male counterparts.

That can range from project management, to scrum masters, to delivery directors, business analysts, user experience roles, and customer management.

“It’s about communication, and it’s about empathy. All of those skills are required in a software company,” said Proud, making it clear that soft skills can still be technical, and that women should be in place at every level, in every department and function of a business, because that’s the only way to create well rounded teams.

“The product software engineer is just a small piece,” said Proud, “we need to encourage women into STEM, and encourage them into development. Be product managers, be programme managers, be scrum masters, and be architects. All of these things are high paying jobs.”

Judging by the long list of senior job roles held by women at Forrit, the company is clearly doing its part by creating more pathways for women in tech and giving them what they need to grow, but more needs to be done in the industry at large with over half of women in leadership positions saying that their careers are stunted by a lack of opportunity, mentorship, and barriers to networking.

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Employee loyalty means mature growth

Growing people into their job roles isn’t just about acquiring skill sets and perspectives to build better products. It’s also perhaps the best way for a company to foster a sense of loyalty, retain talent, and ensure that it benefits from innovative employees with ideas for the future. 

That’s not something big players in the cut-throat tech industry are known for, which might be the cause of many employees taking their ideas and jumping ship to start up themselves, limiting opportunities for their past employers.

“Look at the biggest companies in the world just now, across Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, AWS, and the people that are CEOs just now, none of them started the company, but all of them are lifers in the company,” said Proud.

Keeping the best people on-board, and helping them to learn every part of a business is another form of future proofing just as vital as an apprenticeship programme.

For a lot of people with hopes of building a tech business, maybe with just the bare concept of an idea, or maybe even a few lines of code, it probably seems counterintuitive for the technological heart of the business to come second to the people building, and eventually selling the finished product.

Yes, product matters, it matters a lot, but to create something that lasts, and that can be built on for future success, means finding the best people you can, and holding them tight.