E-resistible.co.uk is an online takeaway website that connects local takeaway restaurants to customers facilitating online ordering & payment. The idea came from a module at Warwick Business School called The Integrative Project which was a Dragons’ Den style module where all 350 1st year undergraduates are divided into groups of 6 & told to come up with a business idea to pitch to investors. We went through the full process of developing an idea, formulating a business plan and this culminated with an elevator pitch to a panel of academics and business angels.

The idea was the brainchild of my colleague and close friend Stephen Leguillon who invented EasyOrder.co.uk. I wasn’t actually in his group so wasn’t involved with the idea. He lead the pitch to the panel and received some fantastic feedback on the idea. “Where do I sign” was one comment!

Stephen wasn’t in a group with people he was particularly close to. He lived with me and 18 other people in a kitchen of Rootes Residences on campus. For anyone who doesn’t know what Rootes & particularly Old Rootes is at Warwick, it’s basically the place where all the cool people get put to live. It’s notoriously loud with parties and general mayhem being caused on a regular basis, I can’t remember a week living there without at least 3 fire alarms going off during various nights. Basically a pretty awesome place to spend your 1st year at university.

Stephen sat on his idea throughout 1st year and for 2nd year he, I and 8 other lads rented a huge house for 10 people in Leamington Spa. This was without doubt the best thing we ever did as I have never has so much fun as living with 10 of your best mates in fairly cramped conditions.

It was at the beginning of this 2nd year that Stephen approached Velin Djidjev to join him on his venture. Velin was another guy who lived in the house with us, he is a Bulgarian powerhouse and it would be fair to say he’s the hardest working but also the nicest person we know. On account of his hard to pronounce name we adopted the name Mack pretty much from day 1. I should also say here that Stephen is a Frenchman from Paris and with me being called Steve the possibilities for confusion were quickly spotted. He therefore became known as the totally non stereotyped “Pierre” which unfortunately for him stuck.

So Stephen & Velin (or Pierre & Mack) began properly investigating their business idea and discovered one major competitor already operating in their marketplace, Just-eat.co.uk. Far from being a disaster this was actually quite encouraging as it proved that it is possible to make this succeed as a business model. Stephen & Velin quickly realised that this was going to be a huge undertaking if they were going to do this properly and they needed another person, preferably with local knowledge.

This is where I came in, I think the guys recognised that I’m very entrepreneurial, looking to make money from every situation, and that I have the skills & drive required to get this business off the ground. It probably also helped that I had a car which was vital to sign up restaurants. It became a bit of a joke within the house that I was only invited in because of the car but I like to think it was a little more than that

So we had our team and fairly quickly settled on a brand & domain for the site. We then set about getting E-resistible into a position to launch. The most important of these steps was finding the right programmers to code the website for us. We went out and visited numerous web design companies and all said they could produce something to our specifications however we didn’t have quite the right feeling about everything. Almost by chance we discovered a web design company run by two ex-Warwick students called Nick & Ed, it sounds fairly cliche but we did just know from a gut feeling that it was right. First of all these guys were our age group having just left Warwick the year before, second of all they were enthusiastic and had the same vision as us for the idea. They actually had the same idea but hadn’t acted upon it due to time constraints & need to keep other clients happy.  Finally they were bloody good! I never cease to be amazed by the things that these guys can do, they must be two of the most talented programmers in the UK and we are very fortunate to be working with them.

We quickly appointed Nick & Ed to build E-resistible and the 3 of us went out to pitch the idea to restaurants. This isn’t the easiest thing to do when the website doesn’t actually exist yet however we managed to sign up 18 restaurants in Leamington Spa and Coventry to the idea.

Nick carried out the majority of the work on E-resistible.co.uk throughout early 2008 alongside other projects he and Ed were doing for other clients however it quickly became apparent that the relationship between E-resistible & our programmers was becoming more of a partnership than a client – vendor relationship. Nick & Ed were clearly passionate about E-resistible and could see it’s huge potential and it made a lot of sense as we all worked so well together to bring them into the company. This is probably the single best decision we have taken with E-resistible as it has enabled us to keep our cost base low and develop at a much faster rate than any of our competitors.

The core E-resistible Team is now so incredibly strong because it is well balanced. E-resistible is very much Nick’s baby as he has built it from scratch into what you see today. The reason we work so well is because Nick is able to concentrate on what he loves & is brilliant at, coding, and we are free to run and expand the business day-to-day. I’ll talk about why the team works in more detail in another post but it’s safe to say that I am so happy to be working alongside some of the most dynamic and talented entrepreneurs in the UK at the moment.

This is the team that has taken E-resistible to where we are today. This is just one part of the story but it’s already too long so I’ll save some more for later.