Getting to know you: Ed Bradley

What do you currently do?
We empower businesses and enable change. We are challenging the status quo and are proud to be disruptive.

We have spent 10 years developing a game changing, cloud-based technology that we call The Edge. The Edge is agile, flexible and rapid; it has the capability of connecting any system while maintaining total data integrity. This is all done without any interference to existing systems.

What is your inspiration in the business?
We are living in an extremely exciting time with change happening at lightning speed. To be at the cutting edge of this with a dynamic and extremely skilled team of people, is unbelievably inspirational.

New ideas flow every day, within the company; we develop rapidly and react to valuable input from our clients to continually make sure that product is at the forefront of innovation.

Who do you admire?
I wouldn’t say that I have one particular individual that inspires me in business. However, in line with my ethos and the ethos of my company, those game-changers and trailblazers in the technology industry inspire me. Those individuals like Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg and salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff who are looking to shape the future of the industry as a whole and not just exist in the present. That kind of thinking inspires me and drives my company.”

Looking back are there things you would have done differently?
Ha! That is a tricky one to answer. Have we made incorrect decisions? Absolutely… many!
However, in hindsight, if you look back on some of these decisions, they make up what we now know, as a company, and who we are. We started off as a 2-man band in a cellar in London in 2004. The only way that we were ever going to know what to develop was by testing it in the market, seeing if it worked and going down a few, inevitable dead-ends along the way.

We sometimes see some other companies coming into the market with an idea that is structured or commercialised in a particular way. Often we are able to look at it and say… “Hmmm we tried that a couple of years ago and it didn’t work”.

We are very happy with where we are and where we are going at this stage and as long as we keep developing and making (hopefully not too many) mistakes, we will adapt along with or ahead of the market.

What defines your way of doing business?
In terms of delivery, we want to create as much value to our customers as rapidly as possible. We are often being asked to push the boundaries to deliver against tight deadlines and we pride ourselves in our success rate on this delivery.

We are a fun, honest, dynamic, positive and innovative group of people and we hope that this comes across in our way of doing business. When Tesco were going through the due diligence process on Virtualstock, we were humbled by the number of our clients who put themselves forward as references and really wanted to see us succeed.

What advice would you give to someone just starting out?
You need to have a vision, believe in it and build your confidence in it. With this, you will be able to commit to the hard work and the sacrifices that you are going to need make in order to create a successful business.

If you are able to genuinely project this confidence, you will be able to influence and gather the support of people around you to help you build and develop your ideas.

And most importantly, remember that business is about people. Be trustworthy, genuine and supportive to employees, customers and partners this is essential to your success and after all is what life is all about.