millionaire?
Who wants to be a
Siobhan Madaras speaks to the alumnus who has his eye on the next generation of entrepreneurs
or many, the 9-5 life is an accepted fate but for others, the thought of being just another cog in a working wheel is never enough. The constant strive for opportunity and innovation is what has put many famous entrepreneurs on the map and Hertfordshire based businessman Steve Arnold is no different.
F During our short meeting, I questioned Steve on
his journey so far and in just 20 minutes he crams in a lifetime of success stories. By 1986, a 25 year-old Steve already had a business management degree and an MA in Digital Systems under his belt - the latter of which he received from the then Hatfield Polytechnic. As a natural progression, he began registering for a PhD before opting to abandon that route and scratch an age-old itch of starting his own business. Steve developed the foundations of his career with
Softa, a St. Albans based company that sought to employ computer systems relating to sales, marketing and finance into businesses. Despite an explosion of computer technology in the late eighties (the time of Softa’s birth) Steve identified a gap in the market: “There were lots of people who had been brought up under traditional business disciplines and there were also those who had gone through engineering disciplines but there weren’t an awful lot of people who felt comfortable crossing both boundaries. I deliberately put myself in a position where I had a reasonable understanding of both so that I was able to take that knowledge into the market.” Initially the company’s client base consisted of a list of small businesses but very quickly grew to include large corporations including Mars, Cadburys and Rover Group. After ten years of success Steve sold Softa to global consultancy firm Deloitte where he also became a partner for five years. Although describing this time as a great personal experience, he left to develop Softa 2 – a continuation of his software and strategic consultancy path. One year later, Steve sold his company to a firm called Cognos who, today, are part of the technology and consultancy firm IBM. As Steve reels off tales of business success it’s impossible not to be captivated by his resonating sense of drive, yet remarkably, this is overshadowed by his
passion to give something back to society with his new company and the help of an online game. Aware of the fact that a degree alone will not secure a solid career, in 2009 Steve developed Dialectyx – a company focussed on helping young people develop employability and entrepreneurial skills using online software.
“For individuals to develop their knowledge, skills and business acumen is something I have always considered to be an invaluable life skill but perhaps even more so now. People are becoming more and more aware of how important it is to be enterprising and this acquisition is at the core of Dialectyx and My First Million, a simulation game that we have created.” The Dragons’ Den style game allows players to put themselves in the shoes of both an entrepreneur and an investor. The game incorporates the concept of ‘experiential learning’, a field well known to Steve as this is the subject in which he leads a research project at the University of Hertfordshire. “We determined that the most effective way to acquire skills such as these was to actually experience them first hand.” In the 15 months since its launch, the game has
seen tremendous success and has found residency on undergraduate and postgraduate business courses in many UK universities including Hertfordshire and Cambridge. “It’s been really well received and if I’m honest, the success has even succeeded my expectations. The feedback has been so good that we have also taken it into secondary schools, NEETs courses (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and corporate firms. The potential for the product is huge, so huge that we’ve also opened it up to a global market and had some really great feedback after trialling it at a university in Mumbai.” With Steve now about to introduce My First Million to a worldwide audience, he finishes on the qualities that have made his 25 years in business so successful: “It’s the combination of bringing the right team together with the right idea. Once those are in place, things just take a natural course and progression is not difficult. The moment they’re out of place, you find yourself running out of runway very quickly!” f❵
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