Young Stamford tech business hits £1.8m value after Haatch investment

Work colleagues who developed an online platform in pubs and while sharing a tandem have seen their young business valued at £1.8m.

Tim Ramage (30) and James Sear (32) hatched an idea for a digital innovation while working together as senior software engineers at Uppingham digital agency MMT.

For 18 months they spent their spare evenings and weekends on its development, wherever that may have been.

“For the most part, building Avion was done in and around the various pubs of Peterborough and Stamford, sitting there coding away,” said Tim.

“Our company organised a 100-mile fundraising cycle ride and challenged James and I to do it a on a tandem so we bought a 1978 Peugeot tandem off Ebay.

“During the hours and hours of training around Rutland Water, what else was there to do but talk about developing the app?”

The end result was Avion, a digital platform which helps products' teams from large corporations plan and build software in a more streamlined way.

“We had something rough and ready and had a little bit of interest, and then enhanced it from August 2018 for the next eight or nine months,"Tim added.

“It's a really complex app and has taken a lot of time and effort to get it to where it is."

The interest built enough to persuade James, from Stamford, and Tim, who grew up in Leicestershire, to quit the security of their day jobs in April 2019 and set up Avion as a full-time concern.

“We decided it was going well enough and thought,‘this is it, we should just jump straight in and give this all we can’," Tim explained.

“It has been a rollercoaster of a journey getting to this point and we’ve loved every minute of it; the last 18 months working full-time on it have been an absolute joy."

Their client base already includes global electronics giants Panasonic, and German car manufacturers Mercedes-Benz, and the value of the company hit the £1.8m mark following a £300,000 investment from Stamford-based digital investment fund Haatch Ventures.

It is Haatch’s third investment in Stamford in the last six years, part of 18 digital technology businesses it supports across the world, including Silicon Valley, California, New York and Dublin.

The investment has helped Avion recruit their first employee, who joins in January, as they look to expand their customer base and further develop their product.

“Haatch have a wealth of experience within their partners that hopefully we can draw from and they have tons of connections which is crucial for us in our next phase of growth," Tim said.

Avion was achieving 100 per cent month-on-month growth before the Covid-19 pandemic and has continued to prosper since, with their digital tool tailor-made to help companies of all sizes with remote working.

“Digital tools like Avion are becoming more important than before," Tim added.

“I think remote working is here to stay and hopefully Avion will become even more relevant."