Recipero has grown out of an idea conceived several years ago, the article referred to below, written by businesswings.co.uk explains well how Recipero’s founder gained inspiration for the fast moving business that it has now become.

Many founders of fast-growing businesses set out with the most modest of intentions.

For example, Pierre Omidyar originally set up eBay as a vehicle for his wife to trade collectables called Pez candy dispensers. Omidyar had no inkling of what the site would become.

Adrian Portlock, whose Gloucestershire-based company Recipero has built an online database comprising the serial numbers of 100 million stolen goods, agrees that this is “often the way with businesses. If you see an opportunity based on providing a solution, that’s normally a good basis for a start-up.”

If you see an opportunity based on providing a solution, that’s normally a good basis for a start-up
One only has to look at some of the ridiculed inventions on Dragon’s Den to see the perils of trying to solve a problem that doesn’t exist (what problem could have give rise to the ironing board that doubled as a piece of lounge furniture?).

Adrian, 50, set up his database, Check Mend, after an irksome experience highlighted a need for such a resource.

“I lost a phone on the Tube in London,” he recalls. “And when I went to the lost-property office they said ‘can you identify the phone?’ So I said ‘a Nokia 6310i.’ And they said ‘well, we’ve only had 35 of those today.’

“Then they wanted an IMEI number, the serial number of the phone. After much messing about my network gave it to me and I managed to get my phone back.

Eureka moment
“It then occurred to me that there was a market for keeping those details somewhere central, so if that if people lost any gizmos they could log in and find them more easily.

“So that’s how it started and it did really well.”

To read the rest of the story please go to:
www.businesswings.co.uk/articles/Starting-an-internet-based-business