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Chapter 22 - Zencudo
www.zencudo.co.uk
Zencudo is a shopping search engine based in the
UK. It was founded in August
2002 by small business owners.
We spoke to their Managing Director James Penman.
Your name: James Penman
Company name: Zencudo Ltd
Website URL:
www.zencudo.co.uk
Your company / website vision statement / goal:
To advertise everything that’s for sale in the UK on one website.
What you sell / services you offer (brief description of your company):
Zencudo is a shopping search engine specific to the
UK. Zencudo hosts over three
million new and used products in around 7000 categories, offers price
comparison on around a million items and provides product information
and reviews.
Private traders can sell used items or vehicles for free and businesses
pay a small fee. In addition, Zencudo provides information on many of
the latest sales, discounts, promotions etc running in UK shops.
Have you always wanted to run your own business? What were some of your
previous jobs / companies?
Yes. I decided I wanted to run my own companies in my mid-twenties
(thirty-three now). To get here, I was trained in marketing at a
multinational company here in the
UK called ICI. I’ve also
done stints as a postgraduate teacher at Oxford University and worked in
a net incubator in the dotcom boom.
Have you got any qualifications? Please tell us about yourself
academically?
I have a first class degree in English Literature from
Durham
University and research degrees from
Oxford
University.
How / when did the idea of your website / company come about?
We bumped into the idea whilst running an advertising network. It was
clear the Google’s AdSense was going to sink the advertising network so
we started to experiment in different areas back in 2004. The result of
this was a shopping search engine hosting new and used products specific
to the UK.
If you could give readers of this book one piece of advice what would it
be?
Keep going. It’s amazing what you learn and what’s around the corner.
It’s also quite disturbing how little you really know when you start
out.
Who are your role models / mentors and why?
Ernest Shackleton (he got stuck in the Antarctic with his crew and spent
years getting back to civilisation), Edmund Hilary (of Mt Everest fame),
novelists who spend a decade or so on a book. Anyone with genuine grit
and an eye to the long-term.
Excluding yours, what company / website do you like / admire the most?
For sheer ambition and brilliance, Google. For its intelligence and
integrity, the FT.
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