31 GENIUS INTERVIEW Camilla Young
FEED: I assume you do a lot of consulting with clients as well? Especially in government, where people may not be as familiar with all the technical possibilities. CAMILLA YOUNG: Ours is a very consultative approach. When you’re building a broadcast system, there are so many different things to consider. You’ve got to consider integrating with legacy systems; how many people are going to be watching; all the caching. It is quite a complex thing to get right. So, yes, we tend to work in a very consultative way with clients. We’re quite a ‘techie’ company, we’re not a fluffy marketing company. We don’t have a lot of sales people and it’s a really technical sale. The way we like to operate is just to be really technically competent and prove ourselves like that. Our sale is usually to the technical people in the company, and we do like to have real contact with the technical people at the client’s, so we will be talking developer to developer. You have to get the awkward IT people alongside, because these are the people that we will be talking to as we support the systems ongoing. (We provide 24/7 ongoing support, as well.) We’ve got a network operations team here in Plymouth now, so we’ve grown from the two people that started to, I think, we’re just about 42 people now. FEED: What do you see as the future for the company? And what do you see as the future for the industry? CAMILLA YOUNG: I don’t know what the future is! I think the future is quite worrying, actually. Brexit is slightly worrying, because we don’t know what’s happening. We have set up a Vualto BV, an entity in the Netherlands to counter that and it wasn’t particularly cheap. There’s obviously a lot of amalgamation in the market from the big players with Disney and all. But I don’t know what to say to that really, apart from the fact that no one’s watching proper telly, so I think we are in the right business. But where the streaming business is going, I think it could only get bigger.
GROWING UP Vualto began life seven years ago as two people in a small office in Plymouth, and now boasts a workforce of 42
somebody else says it, who is a male, and it gets picked up. It’s really subtle things. And also the pay – I’m sure that I have been paid less in my jobs than men in the equivalent job. In fact, I know for a fact I have. That’s probably the thing that upsets me the most. Other than that, you just have to prove yourself by being better. FEED: Do you have any ideas about how equality might be improved in the industry? Or does it just require constant vigilance? CAMILLA YOUNG: I think it’s improving – I think we just need to be equal. I would like more young people to get into IT, more females. I think that’s really important. We are running an initiative called GIRLCODE, which is a free session teaching code mainly to young females – although it is open to boys. We’re running those sessions both in Plymouth and in Bath, at half terms, in libraries. That’s gone down really, really well. We’re also doing some mentoring. I’ve just signed up to be a mentor for a student at Plymouth University. I’m hoping that I’ll get a female there. So we’re trying to do our bit, but it is difficult and I think unless it’s changed at primary school level, then I can’t see it improving.
FEED: Has being a female entrepreneur in the technology industry been especially challenging? CAMILLA YOUNG: I don’t think so, but I think it probably would be if you were a shrinking violet. I think you have to be cleverer than some people, and I think you have to be slightly more… not outspoken, but upfront. It’s not really held me back, because I wouldn’t let it hold me back. But there are underlying things that you notice. You might say something in a meeting that gets ignored and then
WE’RE QUITE A ‘TECHIE’ COMPANY, WE’RE NOT A FLUFFYMARKETING COMPANY
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