Venn Digital expand by fourfold into the newly launched Nest at Glasshouse

We caught up with Venn Digital’s CEO Brian Whigham to find out how Venn Digital have been settling into our newest workspace in Glasshouse, Nest and to hear a little more about their plans for further expansion.

Hi! So tell us a little bit about yourself, your role and how long you have been with the business.

I’m Brian Whigham, the Chief Executive and Founder of Venn Digital, and I've been with the business since 2010, when it was founded.

Tell us a little bit about what Venn does and what makes you so unique.

Venn Digital is a recruitment and marketing platform providing our software solution for the recruitment and careers industry, mainly for recruitment agencies. We also have a careers website platform to help brands attract, engage and employ talent across the world.

Since relocating to Alderley Park, Venn seems to have gone from strength to strength. Tell us a bit about how the Venn team has grown and expanded over the last few years. How many people do you employ now? 

Since we've come to Alderley Park, we've gone from 18 employees to 48; we've taken on double the amount of staff and that was part of the reason for coming to the Park. We had been based in Wilmslow and we just felt that the office environment didn’t represent the future of where the brand was headed. We came to Glasshouse because the vision was always to have a collaborative community of other businesses, talent, and facilities that would help us build our employer brand. 

We were isolated in our own offices, and when you're not surrounded by other companies, you're not surrounded by other talent. To us, Alderley Park was unique; with the mere, forests, sheep, and cycling…just other people being around made Venn Digital feel like a bigger business. 

You're always around other people at Alderley Park, which is quite motivational. You bump into people in the corridor, which has meant, we've met new customers and we've met new friends. The profile of the business has become bigger as a result of being around others. The Park has been a really positive move for us, simply because we've now grown directly by being based in Glasshouse.

Has working at Alderley Park resulted in any collaborations with other tech customers here?

Yes, lots, you can't help but meet people. You have access to other customers who have similar ideas or challenges, and you begin to have coffees and share ideas and conversations with people. Then they know people who know people, so by default connections are made. It’s like a little village!

We've collaborated with new customers and investors; people who now want to invest in Venn because they've seen who we are, they see what we're doing. We've won customers and staff directly because the visibility of the business has increased tenfold, just by being in a bigger building. 

We notice you’re recruiting at the moment, are you growing even more? What sort of skills do you look for when expanding the team?

Yes we are recruiting, we're looking to take on another 20 staff. Having just moved to our bigger office we want to increase the headcount from 48 to 68 this year. We're looking for Developer, Operations, Finance, Sales and Marketing talent. Every division of our business is expanding as we speak!

I think that's testament to the demand for the product but also, we’ve become an attractive employer, partly because of Alderley Park. I like to put some of that responsibility down to the fact we've just become a better company to work for, because of the environment that we're in.

You’ve expanded with us here at Alderley Park and your new home is in our fabulous Nest development - our newest space within Glasshouse. How are you finding the new space?

It's cool! That's the only way to describe it - it’s very cool.

The rest of Glasshouse has already got it right, but Nest is even more representative of what people want. Yes, we've got our own private space but there is also coworking, places where you can go and relax, private booths and a wellness suite. 

The concept of Glasshouse is the future of work, being tucked away in a building of your own just feels a bit prehistoric and I think post pandemic, being in a collaborative workspace is the future. Even if some people are working at home, it still feels busy, because there's other people around all the time.

Nest is home to a beautiful new wellbeing and yoga suite - has the team taken advantage of that?

Yes, they’re in there constantly. There's a big focus around people's wellbeing in general, especially post pandemic we’re all looking for a bit of respite and normality. It's nice to do things with your work colleagues beyond just work; so to do yoga, or breath work just adds to the overall sense of belonging. People are even coming in early in the morning to do yoga, they'll start the day off really positively. Mentally, it's a good place to be.

What’s next for Venn Digital? 

World domination! We are staying in the UK for the rest of this year with plans to open up an office in the US and Europe and maybe further abroad. We have to get the right team, structure and processes in the UK, that will get us an optimum framework to be able to replicate our culture and process as we go international.