What is unique about your business?
Ellexus is a team of experienced, specialist developers who are experts in deploying and tuning Linux applications. As such, we are uniquely placed to tackle the problems in this field that many companies in the chip design and biotech industries face.
I founded Ellexus five years ago and our inaugural product Breeze is now used by IT managers and people who deploy complex applications all over the world. Breeze profiles applications and file IO (activity) so engineers can be sure that their applications are using their HPC (high performance computing) cluster as they should. Customers include ARM, Cancer Research and Mentor Graphics.
We are now taking this unique profiling technology forward to develop a new product, Mistral. We have extended and optimised our IO tracing technology to make a tool that can run all the time on every job in the cluster. It will be able to throttle jobs that are overloading the system to improve overall cluster performance, which no one has been able to do before.
When complete, we hope that the product will make a huge difference in both the chip design and biotechnology sectors, where handling huge amounts of data can cause significant problems that slow down crucial work.
How does your business benefit from an Innovation Centre location?
The main benefit we have derived from being in St John’s Innovation Centre is the ability to network with other start-ups and occasionally work with them. Cambridge is the technology hub of the UK and St John’s attracts a wide variety of entrepreneurs with really interesting business ideas. Over the years I have got to know many people in the building, which has often resulted in introductions to potential clients through other start-ups’ networks.
What drew you to the sector you currently work in?
When working towards my PhD, which predominantly focused on chip design, I became familiar with the challenges faced by the industry. I looked into this more closely and commissioned a fellow PhD student to write the code that would eventually become Breeze.
I was mainly drawn to this sector because the challenges it faces have been around for decades, and no one has so far found a way to solve them. I saw huge potential for this software in a vast industry, which is only going to keep growing.
How much importance do you place on mentoring?
Through various schemes for start-ups, as well as competition prizes, I have benefited from several different mentors and I have found them extremely useful. When starting a business, it is essential to be able to learn from others, whether this is through a formal mentoring scheme or not.
A mentor doesn’t necessarily need to be in the same industry as you. While I value the advice I have gained from those in the industry, I have also gained a lot of useful insight from companies external to the technology sector. For example, as part of the prize for winning one particular competition, I received several hours of advice from KMPG, who gave me another opinion on various business issues.
What characteristics do you see as important for success?
For a start-up to be successful, it’s important to recognise what you’re good at and what you’re not. For example, I see many examples of businesses that have incredible technology but no idea how to sell it and unfortunately it often doesn’t work out. At Ellexus we try to employ people with different, complementary skills so we cover as many bases as possible. And we’re not afraid to ask for advice when we need it.
Persistence is also vital – a sale can take much longer than you think but you mustn’t get disheartened.
How do you maintain a work/life balance?
I encourage all team members at Ellexus to stick to their hours and make the most of time off. Personally, I am often tempted to go windsurfing on a particularly windy day!
On the other hand, I do keep on top of emails constantly. As all our systems are in the cloud I can work anywhere and I often find I do need to. A lot of our customers are based in the US so evening calls and email exchanges are frequent. But it’s important to make time for the rest of my life too.
What does your average workday consist of?
Unless I’m travelling – I often visit customers and attend conferences in the US and across Europe – I tend to check emails first thing over breakfast at home, then head to the office to join the rest of the team. During the day I plough through more emails, discuss how development is going with the team as well as suggest solutions, and carry out conference calls and web demos. At the moment I am the main sales person, as is often the case with start-ups, so that is my main focus. I trust the rest of my team to handle everything else with a small amount of customer-centric guidance from me.
As several customers and contacts are also based in Cambridge I often pop out to meetings. Every so often I’m asked to give talks or help on workshops in Cambridge on a variety of subjects to do with business and technology, as well as from the perspective of being a female entrepreneur. I am also on the steering committee of Idea Space, which means I try to get involved in their events and meetings as much as possible.
LinkedIn: Ellexus Ltd
Twitter: @EllexusLtd
St John’s Innovation Centre was founded in 1987 by St John's College, Cambridge, the first pioneering business incubator of its kind in Europe. The Centre now provides almost 5,000m2 of managed workspace and flexible leases, currently occupied by around 87 companies and is also the base for around 350 virtual tenants most of whom are also startups.
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