We talk to ViewRanger’s Craig Wareham

by James Agate

WeLoveBusiness.co.uk talks to Augmentra founder Craig Wareham. His company’s product ViewRanger helps casual hill workers find their way and enables search and rescue teams to do their crucial work.

What was your first job?

I was inspired by a TV program on the BBC, that had David Hockney using an early digital painting computer – the Quantel Paintbox – to create digital artworks.  I was creating computer drawn images at school, in monochrome on an early Apple, as I was studying computer science and managed to bag a seat on the art course’s trip to an audio/visual tradeshow in London. Coming back I must have written to every exhibitor at the show asking for a job – if I could get a job in this industry then I would not go to University. One company, that it turned out was a direct competitor to Quantel, asked me to interview in their digital design studio in Soho – and I was absolutely hooked.

So about a week after I left school, at the age of 18, I moved up to Cambridge to join Spaceward Microsystems as a software tester. My first project was for the computer graphics systems for the new ITV Weather broadcasts – so I was downloading satellite images and testing these big boxes of sophisticated computer kit (which, of course, you can now do the same thing via photoshop for a tiny fraction of the cost) and absolutely loving it.  Watching the first ITV Weather broadcast go out – knowing that I had contributed to it in a tiny way – was hugely exciting and motivating. Seeing the directly visible result of the hard work that the Spaceward team had put in was very rewarding.

I then moved into software engineering at Spaceward, and was involved in some neat user interface design work – some of which was picked up by many other companies in the computer graphics market.

Spaceward was full of creative software designers and worked with some of the most creative broadcast graphics designers around the world, as the company grew quickly.  It was an incredibly fun and energetic place to work. Nothing like I had originally imagined working life to be – it showed me how exciting and creative work and business can be.

Is Augmentra/ViewRanger your first business?

Augmentra is the first company that I have been a founder of. However, I have worked in start-up companies where they are at the earliest stage of development – and seen them grow substantially.

Can you give us some background on Augmentra/Viewranger and how you came up with the idea?

Our product concept for ViewRanger GPS came from Mike Brocklehurst’s, co-founder of Augmentra, direct experience of going walking in the Lake District. He and I had worked together in management roles through a few start-ups in the visual computing market over a period of twelve years. We felt that the level of innovation in the computer graphics market was starting to slow – and were starting to look for something else to do.

Mike used to go up to the Lake District hillwalking five or six times a year (ironically he doesn’t get the opportunity to go quite so often now!) – and was starting to use digital mapping on a PC.  This was okay – but didn’t really help on the hillside itself. We both felt that dedicated GPS devices didn’t offer value for money and that, with our experience in visual computing, we could do some interesting things about visualising the contours from a map in new ways.  We also thought that smartphones – which were very crude back then – would advance greatly and that these devices simply made sense as the device to be carrying for personal navigation.

We played around with some ideas of visualising contours on an early smartphone – building an “app” for the Nokia 6600 – and these ideas became the unique Panoramic Mapping that ViewRanger GPS offers. When we got an encouraging response from people we showed this to, we took the plunge and incorporated the company in January 2006 to create a new kind of outdoor navigation tool that was based on running on mobile phone handsets.

At the root of our Panorama concept was the famous Wainwright fellwalking guides covering the Lake District. Within these guides, Alfred Wainwright drew these wonderful detailed pencil sketches of the landscape and then annotated each peak on the horizon. We wanted to bring this concept up-to-date.

How does your business make money?

We have a “freemium” business model. We deliver a smartphone app that comes with global mapping and is fully functional. We then sell premium mapping and guidebook content. This allows our customers to invest in the content they really need – and would otherwise be purchasing in a printed form.

Our history over the last four years is that consumers are willing to pay for high quality content – and to do so repeatedly as they travel around the world.

For an individual guided trail – i.e. a route that can be followed that includes guidebook information along the trail path – the consumer may be charged 25p or 50p. A detailed premium map tile from Ordnance Survey, IGN in France, or National Geographic in the USA, may cost 12p – £2.00, depending on the map type and map scale.

Can you give us an indication of Augmentra’s success (i.e. staff numbers, turnover, profitability etc)?

The company has grown from the two founders to now be a team of ten people. Our customers range from casual leisure walkers, through to search and rescue teams and local government departments. And we have customers using our ViewRanger GPS product right around the world.

Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur?

On a personal level – no. I’ve just looked for fun and exciting areas to work in.  However, doing new things and doing things differently is a motivator for me – and I like to create things from scratch. Creating a new kind of product such as ViewRanger GPS, that is popular, and where the feedback we receive from customers and users is so positive – is what drives me.

What makes a successful entrepreneur?

I think a number of things – but persistence is definitely a highly valuable trait. Persistence and absolute belief in your vision is really important to drive through your ideas. However, this does need to be tempered with the ability to listen to feedback from your customers (actual or anticipated).

There can be an awful lot of hurdles and issues to overcome in creating a new and growing business – and many of these are away from the core focus of your technical innovation or service. Again, you’ve got to be persistent in dealing with these so that you can concentrate on your innovation.

You’ve also got to enjoy the challenge and get a thrill from the “buzz” and stress of trying to do something different. There will be tough times, and times of personal doubt, but the highs of a great piece of feedback from a customer, or seeing your product on a shelf in the high street, or knowing that your product played a key role in a critical rescue mission –are what drive and motivate me.

You’ve had an illustrious career in technology, do you think experience or education is more important when running a business?

Well, as someone without a degree – but with a co-founder with a Masters from Cambridge – and who has employed people with no university education and those with Phd’s from Cambridge, I don’t think there is a simple one or other answer.

In an early stage company, the team is usually small, so everyone’s contribution counts for such a large percentage of the progress and success of the business.

For me, passion, energy, and a desire to do a job really well are vital – irrespective of whether you have experience or education. Experience and education may provide the basis to evaluate whether a candidate has the skills to perform a particular task, but in an early stage company you need people who are willing to step over the line and commit to doing the absolute best.

Plus, the right candidate is usually willing and able to research and learn related new skills – and we all know that a certain amount of flexibility is crucial in an early stage business.

Your product has a variety of markets (leisure, search and rescue etc) did you specifically target these niches or stumble upon these opportunities?

When we started, we thought that targeting markets at the professional end of the market may be difficult, as irrespective of the quality of the software that we created we weren’t sure whether these professional users would be willing to use standard mobile phone handsets as their navigation devices. We believed strongly that consumers would – but would a mountain rescue team member, a field surveyor, or a countryside officer?

So we had identified a wide range of vertical markets within the outdoor activity space, but didn’t directly target them all – because of the issue mentioned above and a need to have a certain amount of focus in what we tried to do.

So it was particularly encouraging when we started to see customers arriving from these professional markets – and hear customer stories about ViewRanger GPS being used to help a fire rescue service, or a large scale missing person search on Dartmoor, or navigating and tracking a team of paramotorists flying the first solar powered paramotors from Monaco in France to Morocco – including flying across the Straits of Gibraltar!

Do you think diversification is important in business or should one market be focused on and served really well?

As a small company, focus is important. Resources are often limited and yet the company will have a long list of things they would like to do that they think would help grow the business. But it is important to show that the business can develop and execute well in one area before it tries to do too many things – and stretches its resources too thinly. Of course, once the company grows – and has shown it can execute well in one market – then there are opportunities for the business to spread its wings a little.

What are your plans for Augmentra in the future?

In broad terms, we want to continue building a navigation and mapping product that is highly valued by our customers around the world. And we want to deliver good reach and revenue returns for our content partners.

Right now, we are focused on increasing our geographical reach, working with more content partners – both mapping and guidebook content partners – and in developing further innovative ways for outdoor enthusiasts to make the most of their outdoor activities.

If we do a good job of this, then we’ll be creating a sizeable business that should provide a good return for our shareholders.

What has been your biggest professional failure and what did it teach you?

I think that you learn a great deal from the really tough times. Being involved with a company, that a large team had worked really hard on, having to go into administration. And, as a result, dealing with having to make a large number of people redundant, and then seeing the business through the administration process to a successful exit to new owners – I learnt a lot about what motivates me and also, more importantly, the many things that motivate individual employees – and also the different ways that employees view a company that they work for.  It was an incredibly painful process for everybody – but I probably learnt more about people working in a company than I ever have reading books or attending any courses.

What has been your biggest professional success and what did it teach you?

I tend to be someone for whom dwelling on the successes is quite short lived, as I very quickly look to build on that achievement and move ahead to the next challenge. The biggest successes for me have occured when customers have shown what a difference the products we build are making to their business or life.

However, I’m very pleased with what we are achieving at Augmentra. We have a great team of employees who are all keen outdoor enthusiasts. So we work and play with ViewRanger.

Whether by luck or judgement, a number of decisions we made very early in the business – focusing on smartphones, believing in premium “apps”, etc – have now been backed-up by the huge growth within the mobile phone and apps market. We faced a lot of naysayers early on, who felt that mobile phones would never be suitable for this kind of location-based activity. Of course, now this is one of the hottest areas of the market.

What advice would you give to people looking to start their own business?

Do it – but do the preparation first. And don’t do it for the glamour, do it because you believe passionately that your product or service can make a real difference to your customers.

In one sentence, sum up what you think it takes to run a successful business?

Passion, persistence, and a great team around you.

Do you think the UK is entrepreneur friendly?

In general terms, yes. It is very straightforward to set up a business – incorporate a company, etc. – and start trading.

I think that the challenge comes in providing support to businesses that are starting to grow. We certainly found that when we were looking to “break out” of our ‘two men in a spare room’ stage, that getting real advice and assistance was very difficult.  BusinessLink, the regional agencies, and others just seemed to want to do some basic form filling so that they could show that they had “helped” another business – rather than actually providing genuine help.

We were applying for a Grant for Research and Development – some of what we were doing was really unique. Our local agency in Cambridge held an open meeting to promote these GRAD applications. Speaking with one of the agencies members after their pitch, I was asked “were we a software company” – to which I said “yes” – to which the reply was “We don’t do software companies as anyone could eventually come up with the software code that you will have written.” – and this in Cambridge, and area where IT is a key part of the economy.

Lord Sugar also visited us when he was doing his rounds as a Government advisor on business. We actually had quite an interesting and frank exchange of views (he had quite a close relationship with Garmin, one of our competitors, even appearing in an advert to promote their flight navigation systems). But he stated very clearly that “software companies had never made him any money – and he didn’t think that the government should provide support to software companies.”

On the other side, the R&D tax credit is a very good opportunity – and I would encourage all innovative technology businesses to look at claiming this.

So – I think that you have to be relatively independent. Get started, focus on your business, look for help – but don’t assume that you can get it, or that the advice you get is always the right advice. Make your own decisions.

What aspect about the British business system would you change (taxation, bureaucracy etc)?

HMRC. The quality of service from HMRC is shockingly bad – and I am really surprised that the new government have not stepped in and made senior management changes. If it was a commercial business, I’m sure the shareholders would have stepped in and demanded rapid improvements be made.

We have had payments mis-accounted for by HMRC in 2009 that we are still trying to get them to correct, and I’d like them to be much quicker at processing R&D tax credit claims. I understand that they are still opening post from 10 weeks ago at the moment – which just seems shockingly poor, and doubly so in the current economic climate when many companies are having to run their cash flow very tightly.