Five questions for: Imam Hoque, Quantexa

What does your business do?

Quantexa helps companies connect the dots in their data. By bringing together disparate data sets and enriching internal data with external sources, Quantexa can produce insights to allow for better-informed decisions.

What's been your company's greatest achievement so far?

In two-and-a-half years, we have grown to more than 130 staff with offices in the UK, US, Belgium, Canada, Singapore and Australia, and have built a client list of more than ten international tier-one organisations, including HSBC and Shell.

What has been your biggest challenge?

Dealing with the rate of growth while staying laser-focused on customer delivery has stretched the management team. Our skills are customer-facing, but also technical. We employ over 100 data scientists, and there is competition to recruit and retain these individuals and develop their skills.

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What are your plans for hitting your targets?

We are on target to exceed sales of £11m this year, having achieved £5m in our first full year of operation. Much of this now comes through international exports of our global leading software. However, our real target for this year is to continue international growth of sales and marketing, and to deliver over £30m next year.

What advice would you give entrepreneurs?

Stay focused on your mission, not necessarily the numbers. Keep asking yourself: is the mission meaningful and differentiated? Does it generate real value for your customers? Can you articulate your mission? And have you built the right team to deliver it?