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While other children were dreaming of being astronauts or actors, Anthony Ball and Matthew Taylor had ambitions of a more entrepreneurial nature. A decade on, the childhood friends are co-founders a business that’s had a £550,000 turnover in its first year.
It was almost inevitable Ball and Taylor would launch themselves into the business community. The duo has earned money from various websites and software applications since they were 14 years old.
The formation of OneCompare.com, on online comparison service for mobile phone tariffs and handsets, came about after the Merseyside-based pair saw a gap in the market.
“We were looking at how items are compared on the internet, and how this makes it easier for customers to pick the best option,” explains Ball. “One day, Matt said ‘Why aren’t mobile tariffs compared on the internet?’
“We took a look into it and realised there was no one doing it, so we got to work putting together something that compared mobile phone accurately.
“We soon found out that the reason why no one had done it before was that there is absolutely no standardisation across the entire market – people can charge mobile phone tariffs in any way they want. It makes it very difficult to compare tariffs side-to-side.”
Undaunted, the duo undertook nearly four months of technical work in order to write a software programme that could best compare the myriad of different phones and price schemes.
Thanks to their knowledge of the internet built up through previous ventures, Ball and Taylor only required £600 to start the business. This experience also allowed them to dispense with the formality of a business plan, with Ball insisting that they simply “start small, try things and see what works.”
The small sum they did raise was thrown straight into an advertising campaign. This led to the fledgling company being approached by PR executives interested in their idea.
“We dabbled in a bit of advertising and once we were up and running we were contacted by Lansons, (a PR company) who had seen the site,” explains Ball. “They put together a proposal and highlighted that because no one lese was doing this, there was a huge niche in the market. There were plenty of press coverage options from people looking for independent analysts.
“Although we’ve got a lot of experience in pay-per-display advertising, like Google and Overture, we really wanted to experiment with the PR angle. It’s worked really well – there’s a nice, steady stream of traffic and people keep coming back.”
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