Company Watch joins the Volaris family

Read the official Volaris press release here

Some thoughts on the journey:

When Denis and Lance entrusted me with stewardship of Company Watch in April 2017 it was both an honour and a big responsibility. For the first time since being founded in 1998 Company Watch was to have a non-founder as CEO. I’d known Denis and Lance since 2003 and we had built up a lot of trust and mutual respect over the years – they gave me freedom to bring ideas to the table and manage and build my own team.  

My first task was to bring our new platform, Angelia, to market: we had started on the journey to re-design and build from scratch about 18 months previously, but it was a huge task and one which we had decided to do in-house. We took the decision that we needed to launch before it completely replicated our old system and I’m enormously grateful to some of our key clients for being early adopters and helping us refine and define critical elements and suggest enhancements before we finally released it in summer 2018.

Since then, we’ve been able to bring a huge number of market-first products to our clients: the TextScore and Aphrodite (both designed and built by Adam), the launch of SearCHeD (thanks to Mike for coming up with the name!) and our response to Covid in conceptualising and launching our Covid Scenario Forecast within a month of the first UK lockdown in April 2020. Since then we’ve released a flurry of new datasets that we’ve sourced, on-boarded and enhanced (NOIAA, Furlough & State Aid data) to help our clients manage their risk through a period that has seen an unprecedented change to the ‘normal’ rules of engagement.    

Over the past 5 years I’ve been enormously proud of what we’ve achieved as an independent, boutique company – we’ve been successful because we’ve shared a common purpose to help our clients manage risk. We’ve done that by continuing to grapple with difficult problems and provide our clients with a set of information and scores that are transparent, explainable and help them make evidence-based decisions. The team has strong ambitions to continue to develop our models and platform and to grow our customer base, and we started to think about the funding we might need to realise our vision for the future.

When Denis, Lance and I started discussing this last year, Denis, who was by then part-time, indicated that he would like to retire but wanted to secure the future of the company and ensure that the current SMT could have the opportunity to bring their plans to fruition. Working with the excellent Robert Lees and his team at Strata Partners, we explored a number of options to be the home for Company Watch in future – for each of Lance, Denis, Adam, Mike and I one company stood out above others. In Volaris, a subsidiary of Canadian listed Constellation Software, we found an ethos that resonated with us: a buy and hold company, focused on profitable growth, concentrating on the qualities that make small businesses thrive, while bringing years of expertise and a professional business framework to support us in our growth.

So, I’m delighted that, as of 17 March 2022, Company Watch is now part of the Volaris family – we’ve certainly been given a warm welcome by the wider group and are excited to be embarking on a new stage in our history. The current Company Watch SMT remains in post – I will continue as CEO with Lance, Mike and Adam working with me on a day-to-day basis and Paul and Alan supporting as Finance Director and Marketing Director respectively. Denis has been able to achieve his well-deserved retirement. We very much look forward to continuing to work with our clients and suppliers and continue to provide the support, challenge and ideas that have helped Company Watch thrive in its first 23 years.

Jo Kettner