Maurice Bryham and David McKee-Wright reckon they know a thing or two about running a business, and look forward to applying their skills and experience in their new roles at IT Capital.
Last week PC Direct and exo-net founder Bryham joined IT Capital in the new position of operations chief and former PC Direct and exo-net head McKee-Wright becomes IT Capital chief executive.
“With PC Direct we thought we had the fundamentals to make a good company but we weren’t sure," says McKee-Wright. "We tried again with exo-net and that worked. Now we're very confident we know how to make a business work and we’d like to apply that to more than one business at a time. Both of us had made some money and people were coming to us anyway, but we didn’t have the right vehicle.”
McKee-Wright replaces US-based Jeff Dittus, who was sacked last October following the company’s dismal financial performance. IT Capital lost $5.95 million in the six months to the end of September compared to the previous year’s profit of $4.85 million.
McKee-Wright refers to the financial woes of the past year as “history”.
“All the cost cutting and cleaning up is finished. This year we will be adding companies to the portfolio.”
He says IT Capital has $2 million to invest and will start raising capital again, though that won't involve the pair investing their own money.
“We’ll be looking at the traditional ways of raising money, from funds and high net worth individuals, but of course they won’t invest unless we’ve got a strategy," he says.
“We stand by our record with PC Direct and exo-net. We believe there are plenty of entrepreneurs with good ideas out there, they just don’t have the accounting and marketing skills. Those are things we can help them with.
“At the end of the day most venture capitalists are bankers but we’ve been on the other side of the fence. We had to raise money from IT Capital. Now we’re looking forward to having the money and actually helping entrepreneurs with practical advice and business disciplines.”