01732 759725 50 AND FINALLY David Jenkins, Founder & CEO, directprint.io 60 seconds with… What’s currently having the greatest impact on your business? The migration back to work and school is having a huge positive effect on demand for our service. IT transformation decisions that were put on hold early in the pandemic are now happening at a pace. In a nutshell, everything’s accelerated – IT folks are recognising that their print requirements have changed, we’re benefiting from that. Where do you see the next big opportunity? There’s still a long road left to run in the ‘cloudification’ of print management – we’re focussed on building our brand, extending our reach and continuing to create an interesting service. Outside of this, I’m interested in the cybersecurity aspects of printing. We’ve got some interesting projects underway and I think that looking at print management as a cybersecurity component – part of a holistic approach, presents a great opportunity longer term. What would make your day job easier? More people! I'm sure that other businesses are also experiencing acute pressures in the current job market – we’re finding it tough to hire the right people for our expansion plans. If we could find ten developers to hit the ground running, I’d sleep better. What’s the best bit of business advice you’ve been given? A VC once said to me: “The trouble with technical founders [he was looking at me] is that they never know when to stop building and when to start selling.” What was your first job? PC World Customer Services. Dressed in an itchy, bright purple polyester oversized shirt with my name on it. I worked on the till. I mostly mis-advised people on software purchases and used my wages and staff discount to buy computer stuff. What would be your dream job? Working for a company that builds satellites for space exploration – being a small cog in the machine that furthers human understanding of our universe (deep huh?). I think that would be satisfying. Favourite holiday destination? Woolacombe, Devon, UK, off season and probably raining. Everyone needs a happy place. Fine dining and good wine, or curry and a pint? Can I have one for lunch with my wife and the other for dinner with a group of friends? You choose which way round, nobody will mind. How do you like to spend your spare time? Spare time!?! I have two kids, aged ten and seven, enough said. Money’s not an issue, what’s your perfect car… and where would you like to drive it? 1976 Triumph Spitfire in pimento red on Highway 1, US West Coast San Fran to San Diego. I had the car and drove the road, but never combined them. It’s likely that the Triumph would break down after about 50 miles, so I’d switch to something more reliable after that. As I’m from an engineering background, I love to continue building, so I use his advice to remind me to SELL MORE! If you had had a crystal ball, would you have done anything differently? Be bolder. I think that we were quite conservative as a start-up. We could have been braver with some decisions earlier in the company history and we should have shouted louder, earlier, about how great our product is! Describe your most embarrassing moment. Pre-COVID, in another professional life, I fell asleep on a particularly boring conference call. They had to ask who was not muted when I started snoring. Luckily it was the days before Zoom video calls. David Jenkins
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy NDUxNDM=