Bob Falconer, former CEO and Richard Bligh, former CO, are two of the UK Telecom’s industries best known figures of the last two decades. They explain how they took a business with c£3 million revenue to a valuation of £1.5 billion before they finally stood down.

They made a visionary decision, about 15 years ago: the future of phone calls will be over the internet rather than using conventional Telecoms networks. The success of GAMMA in the B2B market has been extraordinary.

At the end, in the section called ‘Ian and Chris’s Takeaway’, the hosts discuss the key lessons to learn from this remarkable story – one of the few examples ever of a business floating on the London Stock Exchange and then the share price increasing over 10x.

Bob and Richard explain:

▪️ How they hit £100m revenue in 3 years and then decided they were in the wrong part of the market

▪️ How they had about 5,000 salespeople – without paying a salary to any of them

▪️ How they used an imaginary customer ‘Tracy’ as their guiding light

▪️ How keeping IT systems simple is key to rapid growth

▪️ How an obsession with refining their products constantly was key to keeping growth going

▪️ How a forward-looking investor played a critical part in their success

00:00 - Welcome and Hosts Intro

01:58 - Acquiring Distressed Assets: The Atlantic Telecom Story 

03:11 - From Asset Acquisition to a Viable Business Model 

09:30 - Meet 'Tracy', The Mythical Customer That Drove Success

13:10 - The Visionary Pivot to Voice Over Internet 

16:07 - Exploiting Incumbent Weakness: The Innovator's Dilemma 

18:10 - The Strategic Rationale for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) 

19:35 - Our Sponsor: NETS International 

21:25 - The Indirect Sales Model: Scaling Through Channel Partners 

28:00 - The Strategic Advantage of a Focused Product Portfolio 

33:00 - Cornerstones of Company Culture 

38:48 - Ian and Chris’s Takeaways

Bob Falconer is now retired. Follow Richard Bligh:

• LinkedIn - com/in/rbligh

Billionaire Business:

• Website: billionairebusiness.net


• Follow us on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/billionaire-business-podcast/?viewAsMember=true

Buy the book “The Street-Smart MBA – Mastering Business Acumen Without Going to School” by Ian Fishwick

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Sponsors for Series 1:

NETS International - https://nets-international.com