OnBuy leaves Bournemouth and nobody cares

but we do care they're leaving the town

Cas Paton, CEO and Founder of 2016 Startup business Visor Commerce Limited trading as OnBuy announced this month that he is moving their 'headquarters' away from Bournemouth for London, Manchester and New York. The business operates as a Ebay marketplace competitor.

I thought it would be good to give some background and context to Bournemouth to allow you to form your own conclusions of his comments. He said in his LinkedIn post...

 

Having also formed our business in 2016 thanks to a Silicon South Business Accelerator, my memory of the last eight years of Bournemouth is fairly vivid, I can't say the same for running the business because every year has been very different and busy.

I have also had some kind of base in Bournemouth since 2004 and because I'm originally from West Dorset I have always visited it before that time.

This is exactly how the town got the nickname of Silicon Beach. After the internet boom of the 2000’s, Digital Agencies were initially formed in London such as AKQA, before the staff grew up, had families and headed to the coast. One such example is Redweb, founded in 1997 by Andrew Henning before moving their offices to Lansdowne, Bournemouth in 2010.

You can probably guess the first point that I am going to make. Life is made of boom and bust.

The 2000 Internet boom gave us a flattering in the mid 2010’s as the graduates grew up, bought houses and had families. Founders sold their businesses to their middle management and the 2020 event caused the likes of Redweb to go bust. I’m jumping around the timeline a bit because the start of something can happen many years before the climax.

By mid 2010’s the energy had started to be zapped. A major networking event Meetdraw occurred for the last time in 2019 which had been running for ten years and Brexit would create uncertainty by removing some of the European funding used by the business support agencies such as Silicon South who also helped promote the area.

The Startup Playbook

For Cas Paton to comment on a relatable subject such as the high street creates a quick win to get Joe blogs on his side. Having said that, it's quickly noted by readers in the comments that Onbuy.com is an online business potentially taking trade away from the high street so the message of attracting talent is very confused.

Cas believed he could start a business and make an area great at the same time. Yet micro history has demonstrated its not the local authority council that can do this, it is the people and communities that do. You must take time to invest in them to show a return. To my knowledge I don’t feel Cas or his staff did this, or had time to do this considering everything that went on after 2016.

I made the same social mistake. Our mission is to "Connect manufacturing with the digital economy". Locally to Dorset that is to say to connect the people that work in the rural engineering parts of Dorset to the digital and creative conurbation of Bournemouth and Poole. Aligning the skill and talent of the county. I thought that would strike a cord with everyone who had authority. An easy win I thought. Cutting a long explanation short, it would take a lot of effort and it was clear to me that the different groups of industry liked to keep to themselves. So I buckled down and focused on growing my business first and come back to that later.

What I did do correctly was to mingle with the digital and creative communities up and after forming the business. I therefore wasn't surprised what Bournemouth could offer me or what it couldn't. While the networking scene fell off the radar, I was surprised what it started to offer me in other ways.

I'm going to avoid commenting on Cas Paton’s historic hype surrounding OnBuy's potential growth and how it will become a Unicorn because I know that is the game you are paid to play as a Founder when you are burning the Investor’s money to fail quickly.

But Nobody Cares

When you are a teenager or in your early twenties, everything you do is celebrated by your Friends, Family, Peers and the Media. However when you reach your thirties while your peers are settling down, nobody cares what you do.

The only way people will care about your 'success' is when you are investing in your community. I fail to understand what an e-commerce business with no product fulfilment and no tangible assets needs from a town when a common practice has become to work from home. I don’t feel OnBuy had time to invest in their community to create the support it needed and dealing with the local authority council was never going to produce results.

Never saying Never and Never saying No is the first thing you learn when running a business or simply dealing with people. Another way of saying this is don’t burn your bridges and if you rock the boat, don't make it sink. 

Keeping the door wide open for opportunities is key and I'm confused what outcome Cas Paton wanted from his comments. I give him credit as a business leader for publicly voicing an opinion, but while on the way out then I feel his timing is poor.  He states a satellite office will remain in Bournemouth so one can presume at a size it should have always been.

I can only echo other people's comments that maybe he was simply trying to cover up a poor decision or his Investors who are also in the marketplace scene, are pulling him closer to them to consolidate the businesses. Whatever the reason if they had just left silently I don't feel anyone would have noticed.

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