Meet the IT man behind JK Rowling’s Pottermore
JK ROWLING hit the headlines last week when she scuppered Apple and Amazon by taking her books into the digital world on her own online platform. Her entrepreneurial endeavour, however, was built by another rather entrepreneurial endeavour: a digital agency called Think. Think has only existed for eight years. It has travelled all the way from Tarek Nseir and a friend making websites in his student digs to scoring digital deals with the UK’s publishing queen.
Unfazed by the hype, Nseir tells me that his company simply tried to “set the scene” for Rowling’s Pottermore, allowing the site visitors’ imaginations to do the rest. The site, Rowling insists, is to be shaped by the reader. “It’s the same story,” Nseir explains, “but with one new addition: you.”
It’s funny to think that this man fell into the business somewhat by accident. “I used to earn pocket money as a child by being everyone’s friendly IT support kid, building computers for people and showing them how to use email. I chanced upon my business when someone I’d built a computer for told me he had a £20,000 budget for building a website.” Despite not knowing the first thing about how to do it, Nseir took on the challenge and pitched for the work. “I didn’t know what I was doing, so I went to the local design college and put up adverts for a designer’s job that didn’t exist yet. The next think I knew I had 14 people in my student flat waiting to be interviewed.” He won the pitch and made £12,000 in profit for completing the job.
This gave Nseir the entrepreneurial bug. He won his next client while still at university simply by recommending that a clothing company get a website and that he’d do the work for £70,000. “It’s crazy, they said yes,” Nseir tells me. “Crazier still was that the online wing really took off, they made stacks of cash through it, which meant my flatmates and I had boxes and boxes of designer clothes stockpiled in our uni flat.”
After graduation, Nseir decided to give the business a go full-time. He employed three people and they set themselves up in a shared office in Newcastle.
But the business didn’t really take off until they landed Northern Rock as a client: “It was very lucky really. We were sharing an office with an advertising agency that worked with Northern Rock. They put us in touch with them and we started doing a small amount of work for them.” The agency grew from there. “We grew with Northern Rock, and as you well know, Northern Rock grew very fast at that time.”
However, this meant that when disaster struck for the bank, disaster struck for Think. “It was a horrible time. They made up 60 per cent of our revenue and in just two weeks they were gone.” The shock hit the workforce hard: “The staff had trusted us to be a business that grew every year. They trusted in that promise. For 18 months afterwards, we had to work really hard to regain that trust.”
“It’s amazing what adversity does though,” Nseir reassures me. Boldly Nseir took all the money they had in the bank and headed to London to pitch for new clients. “It was amazing, we won everything we pitched for.” In just a few months, Think had the BBC, Bupa, Hays Recruitment and Lloyds TSB among others. “Our revenue didn’t suffer that much in the end, but the experience was one hell of a treadmill.”
Now Think has bagged the latest innovation in digital publishing, what more can there be left? Masses, Nseir assures me. “Online personal finance could be so much better. Digital innovations could do away with wide-boy mortgage advisers for one,” he laughs.
CV | TAREK NSEIR
Turnover: Predicted to be £11m this year
No. of staff: 104
Job title: Founder and chief executive
Age: 30
Born: Lebanon
Lives: Islington
Studied: Information Systems at Newcastle University
Drinking: Whisky
Reading: Reading
Idol: Steve Jobs
Talents: “Being able to cook up culinary masterpieces in the kitchen.”
Motto: “Work hard, play hard.”
First ambition: “To join the air force.”
Awards: Young Business Achiever, Evening Chronicle 2002; Young Entrepreneur of the Year 2006; North East Young Business Executive of the Year 2007; David Goldman Price for Business 2007