Man who skipped uni went from £6-an-hour apprentice to selling company to Amazon
A man who never went to university after underperforming at his A-Levels ended up selling his company to Amazon.
Despite holding ambitions of one day creating a $100m dollar company, Matt Warren was struggling to grow his watch business 12 years ago after finding it difficult to keep track of stock levels across different platforms as online shopping began to boom.
But after developing a neat bit of code and new computer software designed specifically by Matt for businesses like his own, he works today at Amazon's swish offices at Technium 2 in Kings Road in Swansea after selling his start-up firm Veeqo to Jeff Bezos' retail and tech giant for an undisclosed sum.
Success was never guaranteed for Matt , who "didn't do too well" at his A-Levels and never went on to university, choosing instead to get a job as an apprentice.
He remembers exactly how much he got paid in his very first job – £6 an hour fixing computers for a global IT company.
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He says he achieved success as an entrepreneur despite underperforming at A-Levels and never going to university (John Myers)It was that apprenticeship which got Matt into IT properly and with some extra training he learned to programme and became a computer programmer.
Over the next four years he learned more and more and built his career until he decided to start setting up his own businesses, including Jura watches.
"I don't think I was ever a very good programmer," he admitted to WalesOnline.
"But I was able to just about do it. I was more interested and curious about it and what you could achieve by programming."
His problem with stocking systems at his watch firm inspired his next business venture, called Veeqo, where he "saw an opportunity for other entrepreneurs or sellers to have a bit of software to connect everything and synchronise everything".
While there was already software available on the market, it was too complicated and way out of their budget as a small business - so Matt created his own.
While his initial motivation was to solve the problem for his own business, he knew it would work for others too.
And work it did, although he admitted that in the early days of Veeqo he was banned from writing any more code or accessing the code base as it was though his time was "better spent focussing on the business", he joked.
The success of Veeqo is down in part to a case of "right place, right time" , Matt claims, but there was also a desperate need for what his team were building.
While a bit of a rollercoaster at times the success was almost immediate, and he says he "always knew it would work".
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"My ambition was to create a $100m company.", he recalls. "I wanted to create something that was based in Wales that would create really well-paid jobs, help put Wales on the map, I wasn't sure if I would reach that goal.
"But even from day one we had lots of customers finding us and signing up and using the software so I kind of knew we were going to do well.
"I probably didn't appreciate how well it would do until two or three years ago perhaps."
During Covid "everything increased dramatically", as there were many more people selling online who suddenly needed software.
He was "inundated" with new sellers joining Veeqo - and then one day in late December 2020 an email arrived from Amazon expressing an interest in purchasing the fbusiness..
Taking such an offer for the company was a "very interesting time", Matt said, but after convincing himself and his shareholders it was the right thing to do go they agreed to sell up.
The value of the deal has never been disclosed, and it was closed with minimal publicity. But for Matt, for Veeqo, and for tech companies in the region, it has been a big deal indeed.
Matt, who believes anyone could do what he's done, believes the success of his business has helped put his corner of Wales on the map for the ever-growing tech sector - and says directors of Amazon popped over from Seattle they were "genuinely blown away" by the area.
He has also had "loads of contacts since the news came out from people in London" who are originally from Wales "inquiring about coming back" after previously finding themselves unable to find high-paid jobs in Wales.
"I hope this is the beginning to help bring more people back to Wales – stop the brain drain"
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