Name:

Tim Dew.

Age:

46.

What is your business called?

Games Without Frontiers.

Where is it based?

Edinburgh.

What services does it offer?

Games Without Frontiers is what is known as a Serious Gaming company. Serious Games apply game technologies into ‘serious environments’ like business, education and healthcare to enable people to learn for themselves.

Our first game, Rocket, teaches people how to run a complete business and improve its productivity; all in a single day.

We work on the principle that you didn’t use a manual to learn to ride a bike; you jumped straight on it. And it’s just like that: 26 weeks of a business trading is condensed into 26 minutes.

Participants learn about cashflow, delivery of services, marketing, finance, management, human resources, Return on Investment cases but we don’t teach anything – the simulation environment does it all.

To whom does it sell?

It is being used for a range of applications including leadership development, graduate selection and training by organisations such as CALA Homes and AGE Scotland. We recently ran the game in conjunction with Barclays to build the skills of its sponsored intake of the Saltire Foundation.

What is its turnover?

£150,000.

How many employees?

Five.

When was it formed?

2017.

Why did you take the plunge?

I had been increasingly frustrated by traditional methods of training people that I felt were too slow.

Reading the book Unconscious Branding by advertising expert Douglas van Praet a few years ago drove home to me that “the only way to get someone to believe in your idea is to get them to believe it was their idea in the first place”.

I developed the idea for Rocket from the recognition that change in organisations has to be driven by people and that gaming (recreation or serious) is enormously powerful at engaging people. The idea really came from research that I was conducting over five or so years into how to create environments that rapidly accelerate learning. Work in earnest started in 2016, we launched the company in February 2017 and we had our first paying client in August 2017.

What were you doing before you took the plunge?

I worked in recruitment for Paul Atkinson in Edinburgh, then in a niche accountancy firm advising business startups on optimising their planning. Over the past 12 years, I have been acting as a business doctor to help established SME’s to build productivity and scale their businesses.

How did you raise the start-up funding?

Having been made several offers of backing, I built a Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme package with my accountant and went to all my business friends and family. We had £100,000 raised within a few weeks.

What was your biggest break?

Securing the appointment to Games Without Frontiers of Stuart Laing as our director of simulations and operations. Stuart has 15 years of experience in high-level simulation with major stock market-quoted companies and has helped rocket fuel our growth. I was fortunate also that I had the IT underpinning created by Mike Perrin, formerly technical manager of Skyscanner, the flight search business which became one of Scotland’s most successful start-ups and was sold for £1.4 billion.

What was your worst moment?

Some deals were delayed for a few weeks which meant I had to go back to friends and family to ask for cash to keep the lights on. All that did though was make me more determined to make it a success.

What do you most enjoy about running the business?

Not running it. My modus operandi is to build each of my businesses to run without me. It’s safer for the staff, it’s safer for my clients and it means I can do the stuff that I love which is making sales, deciding on strategic direction, and inventing new things.

What are your ambitions for the business?

We can train someone up to deliver a simulation session in just two days. We’ve designed our platform to work independently of an expert. If I am right, this has the potential to have massive consequences for the world of education, training and development.

What are your top priorities?

To select a team of world beating individuals and then to establish what formation they should play in and to uphold the standards and culture of the company.

What could the Westminster and/or Scottish governments do that would help?

Walk the floor. Take the time to work in an organisation and understand the real problems that businesses face. In doing so they will quickly understand that much of the support that is provided is not matched well to the very companies organisations are trying to support.

What was the most valuable lesson that you learned?

Sometimes one may be unaware of the loyalty members of the team have to the business, what we are trying to do, and also to me as the person who kicked it off. It’s a quality that might only emerge when things are critical and people are being asked to go the extra distance but it’s humbling all the same and something to be highly prized.

How do you relax?

I don’t really because I am so passionate about what I do. So I work hard but I figured that I rather do this in my 40’s rather than my 50’s. I walk and scuba dive and enjoy having holidays with my wife and two beautiful daughters Katie and Lexie on Scottish Islands. Happily for me, they are very understanding since I spend much of my time planning new business opportunities – and I have a few I think have great potential. I love it, I absolutely love it.