Past Featured Chairmen

How many IT Chief Executives can say that they were there on the notorious 'Mod' runs to Brighton in the 1960s riding a 175cc scooter with the mirrors and lights, looking sharp, dressed in the classic fish-tail parka? It's not a large club, and Graham Sadd is probably the founder member.

Sadd's career into IT is about as far from the norm as it is possible to get. He has no background in technology or sales. He has never worked for IBM or ICL. He doesn't even code. But none of that has stopped him from reaching the top of the tree, nor from being named Entrepreneur of the Year in 2000. In fact, arguably, it sped him up it.

'I was one of those children who knew what he wanted to do at eight or nine years old. I wanted to be a commercial artist. I used to stay in at lunch times to paint big murals. That was all I wanted to do.'

Leaving art college Sadd joined a small publicity firm as designer. But it wasn't long before he found his true calling.
Spotting a gap in the market, Sadd persuaded the management there was money to be made in design. 'They gave me an office and a phone. I had no experience, but I started going out and making sales. It was like nothing I had done before, but I was determined to make a success of it.'

And he did. Within two years he decided that rather than do it for someone else, he would run his own company. 'I became unemployable by the age of 21'.

Unemployable maybe, but successful. He ran his first company, Chameleon Design Associates for five years before going on to run his own publishing house.

It was at this time that Sadd started to become aware of the rise of personal computers.

'I bought an Apple IIe. It had no hard disk. My secretary's typewriter broke down so I showed her how to use it and lent the computer to her. A few days later her typewriter came back but she would have scratched my eyes out if I had tried to take back the computer. I realised then the power of the machine.

'I studied information graphics - not fine art, not painting, but how you use graphs and tables to address a multilingual customer base going through a station or an airport. What was frustrating was the technical aspects, sorting out the font and the typeface. That would take longer than the creative part - but a computer could do it easily.'

Sensing a shift in the tides and realising that the emerging computers would have a profound effect on the information industry, Sadd started up what must have been one of the first electronic publishing services in the country providing public information terminals - it was, in some ways, a very early forerunner of the internet.

But perhaps one of Sadd's most important career steps came in the late 1980s when he spotted another gap. 'The brokers Lloyds annually produces its famous shipping register. This is a massive database and every year it is printed out by the same printers as they were set up to take the database. There was no where else for Lloyd's to go.

'So we came up with a PC based product that would link databases to desktop publishing programs for the automated production of big structured documents. It meant, for example, that Lloyds could mark up their database in other ways and then put it out for tender to other printers rather than being locked in.'

Ventura, a division of Xerox, bought the business, and Sadd stayed on, later taking charge of Xerox's disposal of Ventura.

It was while at Ventura that Sadd was responsible for one of the most revolutionary changes to software distribution, and to magazine publishing. With any new program there is always the problem of distributing it to people who needed it.

'We wanted to find a way to deliver digital product to customers before they knew they wanted it.' He came up with the idea of bundling applications onto CD-Roms and distributing them through magazines. The cover mount was born.

'Ventura was sold to Corel and I was wondering what we could do with this great technology. I founded Infobank to develop published e-Commerce and Supply Chain Management software for corporate and government sectors.'

But alas for Sadd Infobank was swept along on the roller-coaster ride of the dot.com wave. At one point the shares were worth £40 (from an AIM listing of 40p) and the company employed some 300 people worldwide. But it was not to be. When the wave crashed, it brought Infobank tumbling with it. In 2001 Sadd resigned from the company he had fought so long and hard to build into a global player. 'The company had got so big that it was beyond my core competence.'

But like all true serial entrepreneurs Sadd could not sit still for long.

His latest venture, PAOGA, is capitalising on the growing awareness of personal digital identity management. 'People are starting to react to organisations hoarding data on them in an average of 700 databases. The trouble is, while they are aware of the problem, they don't even know where to begin. Half the time we don't know where the data is.'

PAOGA separates your identity and provides individuals with secure data vaults where all your personal data can be stored and managed by you. Anyone who wants to access it can do so only with your permission.

Early days yet, but Sadd is convinced that the moment is right. 'The tipping point has come. Last year I scaled everything right back, cut costs and really put the company on hold. When I saw the Mail on Sunday running with a headline about the DVLA selling your personal details I knew that the time had come.'

From the man who invented the cover mount, a precursor to PowerPoint, worked on an early forerunner of the internet and even invented electronic publishing (it's a long story for another day), it pays to sit up and take notice.

'I don't believe that running a company is a sprint or even a marathon. It is more like a relay race. There are people who are skilled at starting companies, and those who are skilled at running multinationals. There aren't many who are skilled at both.'

With nearly 40 years of serial entrepreneurship under his belt, Sadd has a very simple test for those thinking of the same path. 'You want to set up your own company? Fine, then give me the deeds to your house. If you are not prepared to lose then you aren't ready to win.'

In those 40 years Sadd has never, yet, lost his house. Come damn close several times, but never lost it. And somehow you can't see that he ever will.

Ben Rooney is a freelance business journalist. Ben can be contacted at ben@benrooney.com