Vorboss and the Art of Racing in the Rain

A lot has changed in the world in the last three months, and it’s important to recognise the incredibly sad loss of life on a scale that’s unprecedented in my lifetime. A lot of press pages, blogs, podcasts and other media have already addressed a number of the second order effects of the coronavirus outbreak; with one of the most significant being the widespread damage to the global economy. I’m not looking to repeat that here. 

Instead, I wanted to write about the area I know best: our business. It’s an opportunity to look at the impact, the things we did well, the things we could have done better, and finally to consider what the future looks like. 

In a business that I’ve been running for 14 years, I still recall vividly the impact of the 2008 financial crisis and more recently, the turbulence of the Brexit referendum. Both of these presented complex challenges to our business, and in both cases, we emerged having grown, and also having significantly rewritten our strategy. 

This blog title is a nod to the rather excellent book by Garth Stein – The Art of Racing in the Rain. I can’t recommend it enough. 

The book’s title is in a motorsport context, and discusses the instincts required for racing in the rain (“…memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember.”). My observation is that wet weather has often been an opportunity to showcase some of the best natural talent in the sport. The same applies in business, and adverse conditions will always allow the best teams to truly shine. 

Vorboss and the Art of Racing in the Rain 

The last three months have probably been the busiest that I can recall in the history of the company. Not just in terms of the volume of work that the team have delivered, but also in terms of the mental effort that it has taken to take our carefully considered strategy, tear it up and start over with new assumptions. 

Speaking to a number of our peers, I think this is something that we did well. We recognised very early on that the world wasn’t going to be the same, so clearly the assumptions that formed the basis of our model and our thinking needed to be reconsidered. 

In that short time, we’ve: 

• entirely rewritten our strategy (more on that later) 
• grown the team more than 25% 
• supported our staff with the individual challenges that they’ve faced 
• supported our customers financially and technically 
• continued to build our fibre network in London 
• brought forward a major product launch by 3 months 
• rewritten and relaunched our website 
• recertified the entire business for ISO 9001, ISO 27001 and perhaps most importantly, ISO 22301 (business continuity compliance) 
• continued operations in 30 datacentres across Europe, without interruption 
• created another 17 new jobs (currently hiring) 
• kept all of our staff in full-time employment 

These are just some of the highlights, and I’ll probably expand on a few of these in future posts. 

Crucially, the business has grown – not only in revenue, but in most of the other important measures: 

• we have grown our team 
• we have grown the scale of our fibre asset 
• we’ve seen an increase in bandwidth on the network 
• we’ve expanded our product offering 

These things didn’t just happen on their own. I have repeatedly thanked our team for their tireless work over these difficult months. It’s clear to me that there is an alternate version of this reality where we didn’t act decisively, where the business and the service suffered, and where we might not have been able to keep everyone employed. 

Deep Roots 

The famous Warren Buffet quote goes “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked”. I prefer to think that - like great oak trees after a storm - the businesses left standing are the ones with the deepest roots. We’ve shown that Vorboss has very “deep roots” – in terms of the depth of competency and knowledge, but also in resilience, agility and reputation. It’s these things which have fostered our growth during such a difficult time. 

I’m incredibly proud and grateful to work with a team that understood this, and have joined me in taking a wartime approach to this crisis. It’s an approach that – so far – has gone well. As a result, we are one of a small number of companies in our sector that is currently growing. 

What’s Next? 

We have some exciting new carrier clients on our fibre network. Over the coming weeks we’ll be working with them to trial our new rapid delivery model - we'll be posting some information about that soon, but it's specifically targetted at helping our customers get their projects back on track and their businesses back on their feet.

Our team is now growing substantially. Over the last couple of months we’ve done a lot more than just tread water; we’ve achieved a substantial leap forward with the business, and have laid a fantastic foundation that allows us to now focus on growth. Globally, a huge number of people are out of work - but as a result there is a wealth of talent available. We're incredibly fortunate to be growing, and we look forward to welcoming some of you to our team.

We’ll be continuing the inward investment. This includes a lot of wonderful things that we’re doing for our team (they all now get free mental health support from our friends at Spill, for example), but also the huge investment in the network. 

Finally, I’ll be getting just a little bit more rest – safe in the knowledge that we’re through the worst of it, and our team is stronger than ever.