Thank you for speaking with me both of you, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years already! What are your first thoughts when you hear that it’s been a decade of Every? 

Adam: Two things come into my head: ‘Has it really been that long? Was my hair really that much darker!?’ but also ‘Wow, we have so much more that we want to do!’ It feels like we’re still setting out to achieve what we started. 

Ian: I think it still feels like the start of a journey, so the ‘so much more to do’ is definitely what comes to mind for me too. 

How did you both meet, and what are your memories of getting started with bringing Every to life? 

Adam: We met at a small software company based in the north of Leeds that provided Asset Management systems to LAs of which schools were the largest portfolio of buildings. I was the Sales & Marketing Director and Ian was the Software Director. Ian and I were always the ones speaking to each other about what customers liked and what we think would work best for them. Ian I helped take that company from five LA customers to dominating the market over the next seven years. But the world was changing and the owners at that time weren’t willing or able to adapt to meet that changing need, i.e. that it’ll be schools we need to focus on and help. 

Ian: Yes, because we had worked together for years previously we knew each other’s strengths, and that has really helped over the years.  We also knew the education sector very well, having worked with big systems in the education part of Local Authorities.  That experience definitely gave us both the desire to product really useful, effective systems that we would live or die by and I think that has been the main strength of the business.  It has always been exciting and, for me, every year it feels like we are on the cusp of something amazing.  

Adam: The early days were exciting and very tough. I remember being really excited with our first marketing campaign and feeling good about how schools would respond because we believed in what we were doing. I think we also gained a valuable insight into the mindset of schools and the business managers because setting up and running your own company you have to be a jack of a trades and get stuck in so we really understood the problems schools and the professionals were grappling with. 

What were your initial goals with Every and do you think you have achieved them yet? 

Ian: We always wanted to provide software and systems that a) customers would find really useful and b) would be great value. We’ve tried to keep that ethos through everything we do, including the many products and services that we now offer. It’s always the most interesting test when we look at what we’re doing and how we’re doing it.  We have achieved this although it is never finished, and we work on the basis that we can always do better.   

Adam: We had a vision of a company that could be a market leader and meet a need that no other business was fulfilling, namely to provide really easy to use software to help schools do the right things consistently, with evidence for auditors. I think we’re well on the way but, as Ian said, we have quite a way to go in our own minds. 

Do you remember your first customer? 

 Ian: Adam tells this better than I do, but our first potential customer meeting ever was with a group of nine headteachers at the same time…   

Adam: We had help from an ex-customer of mine who set up a meeting with nine headteachers. We drove to their schools and delivered a presentation around what our new company was about and what the product was designed to do. We really wanted to see how they responded and give us a hard time. Well, after a bit of discussion they told us they’d subscribe for a year! We learned a lot that year as we got down to the hard work of delivering on our presentation. It was the lessons in that year that really helped us appreciate that the product is one thing but it’s the support during and beyond the implementation that cements you as the type of company schools value as their partner.