The tech entrepreneur who beat the odds

This week’s CEO Secrets edition is a catch-up with Timothy Armoo, the founder of Fanbytes. It’s on the front page of the BBC News website and on the Business index. You can read it here.

I first met Tim in the Autumn of 2019 when he appeared as a guest on CEO Secrets. We shot a video at his company’s offices in Shoreditch, London, in which he explained how the study of maths and computer science underpinned his attitude to doing business.

He had quite a memorable office. It looked like a New York loft, with lots of exposed brickwork. There were about 20 employees sitting at computer screens looking at social media accounts. Big screens on the walls showed the latest videos trending on Snapchat and TikTok and accompanying data. The woman showing me round was in her late twenties and she said she felt like “the mum” of the team, because everyone else was much younger than her! Fanbytes specialises in connecting brands to social media influencers. They are interested in what the eyeballs of Gen-Z are up to, so they recruit a lot of people of about that age.

Fast forward to 2022 - Armoo has just finalised the sale of Fanbytes, which he started in 2017, to another digital advertising firm called BrainLabs. Hence the catch-up. He is an interesting example of a young, black entrepreneur who scaled and sold a UK tech start-up, in many ways beating the odds (as the article explains) – this is why I went back to speak to him again for the series.

In fact this is one of things I love about making CEO Secrets, which I’ve been doing for BBC News since it started in 2015. You get to keep in touch and see how the start-ups you encounter progress. I don’t just cover them and move on! I often see what milestones they go on to achieve because we follow each other on social media. Sometimes the entrepreneurs will stay in touch to update me too, personally.

For example, I remember noticing recently that Tina Chen, founder of vegan milk tea drink company HumaniTea (who I interviewed in April 2021) had managed to get her drink stocked at Ocado, a big break for her. I’ve seen Kike Oniwinde raise crowdfunding for her BYP network to help it grow.

Or there’s Sara McQuorqdale, who I first interviewed for CEO Secrets in late 2020. I’ve watched her company Corq grow too, through various funding rounds – not to mention the success of her book, Influence.

Not everything is a success story, of course. I’ve seen the companies of some former guests fold, too – that’s just business.

I’m on holiday this week, but have lots of interviews for the series booked up for the rest of June, a mixture of start-ups and established companies. We are also due to run a series focusing on international leaders and companies in July, tied to BBC World (as well as running online, the series has a regular slot on World Business Report, which run on BBC World TV).

You can always pitch me ideas at my email address: [email protected]. I don’t have time to reply to everyone, but I do read them all!

Thanks for taking the time to read this.