Overture is now a well established booking agency software tool and has been growing consistently for 5 years. We are a tech company and in today’s startup landscape it’s very tempting to search for venture capital even when you may be better off without it. But Overture was to take a less well trodden path, a path that isn’t much talked about in the tech press, the path of offering real customer value in return for profit and a thriving business. It turned out very nicely too!

It all started back in 2010 when Jack (Overture developer) approached Dan (Overture Designer) with an idea to improve the workflows of a previous agency business he was involved in. Knowing the way agencies worked proved to be essential in helping to build a version 1 of Overture.

Overture v1

After the initial design was complete Jack decided that it would be better to develop the product himself rather than bring in external developers. This kept the costs down and more importantly allowed Jack to know the product literally inside out. It turned out that the product wasn’t entirely everything that a modern agency needed, Overture was rocking MVP (minimum viable product) way before it was cool! But with the help of early clients further development of the product ensued. Here lies an important early insight to profitable businesses:

It’s hard to know exactly what customers in the real world need until you have shown it to them and they have a chance to play around with it to see how it fits their workflows.

Because of the additional features Jack was adding to the product it was beginning to grow in popularity, more and more customers were coming on board, our brand standard of offering superb support needed to be upheld so Tom and Xav joined the team to carry out the many tasks of supporting users, importing data and templates and generally being all round go-to guys for everything Overture. Insight number 2:

Take on new team members only when you absolutely need to and can’t live without them. Growing your team too fast only means spending more money that you may not have.

Previous unreleased version of Overture V1.2

Now after a brief hiatus working with many other startups Dan is back in the fold and a new dawn is happening for Overture. Not only do we have a new user interface to be released in the coming weeks, but we also have a cracking iOS app and some other products in the pipeline that will make your agents and artists love you even more that they already do.

Overture cross device web app and fully native iOS app

Looking back at the path Overture has taken we can’t help but feel very pleased with the decisions made. We are a profitable business whose sole aim is to keep working hard for our customers now and in the future. Here’s insight number 3:

Because we have no investors we can focus solely on our customers without having to worry about the opposing agendas of VC money. It means that we will be around for the long haul and won’t simply sell up or go dark when the cash runs out. We might not be a VC unicorn but we will work hard every day to help our customers do business.

So thank you again to all Overture customers for a great 5 years!