Genie Ventures is a digital marketing company. It is the e-commerce company behind Office Genie the office space search engine and 3 other fast growing brands. It had also worked for Outplay Media and International Workplace. Genie ventures is located at Cambridge and was founded by Ciaron Dunne, Philip Wilkinson and Paul Goodwin. What makes them different from other marketing technology providers is that they operate on a business on performance model.

It’s a homespun platform which they originally built to manage their own SEM spent on the network of lead generation sites owned and operated by them. Since then they’ve offered technology and campaign management solutions to companies. They take the risk of paying the media spend, the campaigns need to work for them to earn the profit.

Ciaron Dunne states that the biggest achievement they made till date is the way they’ve developed their team. As they could not hire people who already knew how the work is supposed to be handled, they invested a lot in reinventing the process of recruitment, hiring, training and retention.

Genie Ventures works on the core values of never getting an external funding so that they could do their business the way they want. Ciaron states that traffic, average order value and conversion rate are the numbers to look for in e- commerce. The venture runs campaigns globally and does 25% of its business with the USA and EU. One thing that made them outcompete the market is the development of marketing APIs.

Ciaron states that the toughest thing they have to face in business is to deal with difficult HR situations. He says that telling a good person that he’s not needed anymore is more difficult than any other business situation, everything else is just part of the big game. The company prefers not to dwell on mistakes, instead, focus on strengths and opportunities. Ciaron states that calling oneself an entrepreneur will make them more important than others is the most serious mistake one could make. The “internet entrepreneurs” know less about profit margin and hard work than about networking and funding.

The Bottom Line

Genie ventures is currently focusing on OfficeGenie.co.uk, an office space marketplace that is going through some big changes in the market. This is aided by the increase in office sharing, particularly in London and the reinvented serviced office space. The providers are offering high quality inspirational environments with the growing realization that it doesn’t have to be corporate grey anymore. The market is going to be more fragmented and is set to expand in all directions which will be beneficial as they combine the data and user experience. Other key brands are geniegoals.co.uk and broadbandgenie.co.uk. that have a number of opportunities and challenges ahead of them. Ciaron advices the less experienced entrepreneurs to know their margins and protect them.