ENTREPRENEUR STORIES
Matthew Cleevely, founder of 10to8, tells Catalyst about the three professionals who were integral to his business success
founded 10to8 with three friends and one simple objective: to help make the
Despite all the distractions,
I managed to start a PhD at Imperial College Business School in London, which focused on policy and economic growth through entrepreneurship. But, by that point, the idea for 10to8 had been dreamt up and it was just too exciting an opportunity to miss. My role at 10to8 is whatever the business needs at that moment, which could be handling strategy, accounting, finance,
These basics are easy to ignore, hard to fix and there are lots of them"
world more organised. Our software is an online communications system which manages appointments and business services, dramatically reducing the admin time spent managing bookings. With extensive research – and the help of some alpha testers across a wide range of services and markets – 10to8 became available to the public in 2014. I grew up in Cambridge and used to write to tech companies in the area asking for summer jobs. I designed a mouse mat, disassembled computers, wrote machine learning algorithms for medical data, and built a customised accounting database, before heading off to study engineering at Oxford. I returned to Cambridge for some postgraduate economics, but spent more time focusing on start-ups than on my degree!
compliance, fundraising or people. Beyond that, I’m active in the Cambridge start-up scene, advising a handful of early stage technology businesses, and I’ve also got a sideline in managing the sale of technology businesses (I’ve sold four in the last four years). I’m also a director of the Pint Shop.
IDEASPACE B3 This series of articles is inspired by ideaSpace’s B3 events, at which you can hear from a successful entrepreneur and the three professionals who were instrumental
in helping their business to flourish. The events also include networking, with pizza and beer to finish. Visit ideaspace.cam. ac.uk for details on upcoming events.
ISSUE 03 34
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