Startup for 10: Innovex

For Startup Month today, we’re introducing you to Cheltenham-based executive search and advisory business, Innovex. Innovex can support your business in finding the leadership team to accelerate growth. They work with you to make an impact in your business via people.

1 – In your own words – what do you do?

Innovex is an executive search and advisory business, and what that means is providing retained exec search talent at the C-suite and leadership level.

We also go further than that to provide advisory services on talent acquisition, so making sure that businesses can wage the war on talent for the longevity of their scaling up period. Alongside this, we provide market intelligence and salary benchmarking.

2 – What’s the most exciting thing about what you’re doing?

I think is the word impact. We really are working with our clients to not only find the best time possible at an executive leadership level but then also making sure that the processes that they have in place can set them up for long term success.

I think also the businesses that we work with are making such a massive impact on the world, in terms of security, sustainability and digital automation, as well as in different industries, globally.

3 – What are you most proud of so far?

Scaling in the pandemic.

I flew back from New York to the UK at the same time as starting a company and, within 10 months, we were able to scale to four people and also partner with over 15 companies and a short period of time.

I’m really proud of the types of clients that we work with, as I said, they’re making a massive impact socially and on technology generally. We’re not only fostering long term relationships but also growing new relationships locally as well as internationally across Europe, the US and further afield as well.

4 – What have you found most difficult about being a startup?

Weirdly, hiring internally. It’s our job to advise and to hire great people for our clients, but hiring internally has been a massive challenge.

We’re outside of the big cities, being in the Cheltenham hub. So not only getting the cultural fit right, getting professional fit right, and then finding people who are ambitious to want to scale in a young organisation has been really tough. So I’ve had to learn to trust my gut instinct on a lot of occasions.

5 – What would you do differently if you started now?

Nothing.

We’re here for a reason; we’ve been able to kind of fail fast, learn fast. from a personal perspective, I’ve been able to come out of a big company, where I was just focused on commercial growth or revenue growth, to actually try my hand at things like marketing, or how to grow business properly. I think learning from mistakes is one of the most important things that any founder can do in their journey, so I  wouldn’t change anything.

TechSPARK has been amazing with introductions and just getting to know the South West tech cluster generally. Something that we really want to do in the next 12 months is kind of bring our international exposure into the local community to see if we can add more value to local businesses that are scaling up, like our international clients.

8 – What’s the best thing about the Bristol & Bath tech cluster?

I’m from the South West, I went to school here and grew up here. I moved away from the age of four and I’ve lived in New York, London, and all these different types of wonderful cities, but coming back to the countryside and having access to not only that but also being attached to such an interesting cybersecurity cluster, technology cluster and fintech cluster, just makes so much sense from a business perspective.

So it’s not only getting to see the nice fields that are around, but then actually we can scale a really cool company here to really input into the local scene.

9 – Who will you be nominating for a SPARKie next year?

Moneyhub –  we’re following them and we love what they do.

I’m really passionate about trying to empower and help people in my company from a financial perspective – helping them with mortgages, with savings accounts, or whatever it is. So I think what Moneyhub is doing is really cool, and also emulates a lot of the clients that we actually work with as well. So from a professional perspective, it’s a massively interesting business.

10 – Where can we find out more about you?

So on all socials, particularly LinkedIn where we’re very prevalent. We’re also doing a bit of a rebrand at the moment, with a new look and feel, so find us on Innovex Global and watch that space.