– 17, February 2001
3rd Time Lucky as web guru goes it alone.
– The Sunday Times
In the white walled offices of 2Fluid, a new web design and solution company, Jacqueline Doherty is hosting the launch party she thought might never happen.
Twice before she decided to go at it alone only to be lured into working for somebody else. This time everything is in place including celebrity backing. Jim Kerr the Simple Minds singer has invested in the Glasgow Company in exchange for a small equity stake.
The delay to Doherty’s entrepreneurial take-off has probably been a blessing. Since graduating from Glasgow School of Art she has honed her Internet skills not least as the technical guru behind Chris Gorman’s Reality solutions company and made a small fortune which has helped finance her new venture.
As guests including designers, media types, financiers, assorted friends, advisers and technical wizards gather in the refurbished Georgian Terrace, Doherty reflects on the advantages she has over many other start-ups. She has no debt after making £3m in cash and shares from the sale of Reality Solutions. That is a big help but it does not guarantee success and Doherty knows the hard work starts here.
Kerr is expected to bring some useful contacts from London and Doherty’s growing reputation on the entrepreneur network will raise her profile considerably.
She will join the Entrepreneurial Exchange the Scottish network of business people and will add another voice to a formidable list of females running there own companies. This includes Rita Rusk, Michelle Mone and Ann Rushforth.
At 29 she could be excused for wondering how in a few years she has gone from the daughter of a bulldozer driver to a multi- millionaire businesswoman. Doherty says she has always been determined and hardworking and believes she has earned what she has achieved.
But there have been some lucky breaks on the way such as the invitation to join Caledonian Publishing The Herald newspaper stable now part of SMG to head its new media operations. She was working for Delphic, a small multimedia Company in New Lanark, designing some of the early web pages for Shell, Scotrail and British American Tobacco.
After two years she got the first itch to go it alone and applied to the Prince’s Youth Business Trust for a grant and to Nat West bank for a loan. She managed to raise £10000 and was due to set up in workshops in Motherwell when she got a call from Caledonian.
“I gave all the money back and joined the Herald as studio manager. It was an exciting time. I learned a lot there” she says.
She also dabbled in the music industry securing a record deal for a friend. But when Caledonian was taken over by SMG she decided again to set up on her own. This time she took an office in Royal Exchange square in the heart of Glasgow.
My first client was Chris Gorman who came to see me about starting a record label. He had just left DX communications making his first million pound fortune.
Chris was so full of energy and enthusiasm and he said he would invest in me if I invested in him. So I did. I left my office after only three weeks and moved to a small office in his house.”
It was not easy says Doherty with young children and other people coming and going but it was the beginning of what became Reality. A number of internet projects it produced made it attractive to Great Universal Stores (GUS) which bought the firm two years later for £35m. By then it had moved first to a Renfrewshire farmhouse where it was often a seat-of-the pants operation trying to meet deadlines and cope with unsuitable premises and later to cosier offices in Hillington industrial estate where it is still based. All the time staff numbers and the size of projects were growing.
The company produced the first live interactive site for Steps the pop group and built the website for the Open golf tournament. Doherty laughs as she recalls the near misses such as the time generator blew in the early hours of the morning as they worked to meet a crucial deadline.
“It seems amazing now” she says “but we were working in portable buildings depending on the generator and at the same time developing cutting edge websites.”
When GUS bought the company last summer providing Gorman with £25m in cash and shares, Doherty again seized on the opportunity to start her own business this time with the added benefit of an estimated £3m payoff. A handful of Reality staff have since opted to join her. 2fluid creative joins a competitive market in Scotland let alone the rest of the UK but Kerr has backed what he believes is one of the leading exponents of web design. He met Doherty at the opening of his Japanese restaurant in Glasgow last year when he asked her to pitch for the Simple Minds website. She won the business and the website will help to promote the band's 25th anniversary tour next year.
Kerr’s connections could prove important to the company but Doherty is eager to thank others such as Scottish Enterprise Glasgow for providing strategic advise as well as Gorman and fellow entrepreneur Tom Hunter for their inspiration. “They have great flair. I just hope some of it has rubbed off on me” she says.
