‘How do you build a company from the ground up?’
Supplier Operations Manager Olivia Stamp looks back on a big question she had when joining Accurx two years ago.
How do you build a company from the ground up?
This was a question I was particularly interested in when I joined Accurx two years ago. In fact, finding an answer was a key motivating factor for why I originally took a job here. At the time, Accurx comprised nearly 30 people. I was employee number 28, which felt like a good omen given that’s my lucky number!
The role offered an amazing opportunity to see how a young company should put in place the right systems and structures, and embed a healthy work culture to equip its teams for success. And of course, we had to do all that while creating the many commercial opportunities on which future growth would depend.
Before Accurx, I’d spent a few years working as the Portfolio Manager at Entrepreneur First — which is actually where Accurx’s founders Jacob and Laurence met. While I was there, I picked up tons of useful insights into different startups and scaleups and how people and teams in these communities could learn and get value from each other.
But as much as I liked this role, I was eager to see what life was like on the inside. So joining Accurx, I jumped at the chance to help the team think about the company’s organisational structure, its approach to OKRs, and how to measure success and make sure people were always working on the most important things at any given time.
I started at Accurx in March 2020 which — if you can’t pick out dates in the two-year time-fog of the COVID pandemic — was just before the first UK lockdown kicked in. As you can imagine, it was a funny time to join. But I was thrilled to jump into the ring with lots of different tasks and responsibilities, from managing the relaunch of the company website to later focusing on procurement frameworks and launching our paid modules in Accurx Plus.
Fast-forward two years…
Today, there are even more moving parts to my role. It’s my team’s job to ensure that we’re a trusted supplier in the health system, helping our internal teams to navigate the process of building and selling products in the NHS. That means interacting with NHS Digital and NHS England, working on procurement frameworks, collaborating with our integration partners and maintaining good relationships with them.
It’s a constant balance between being proactive and having to be reactive because our external environment is constantly changing. From the pandemic, we have learnt how quickly things can move. For me, lots of this is about how the private and public can work together to create meaningful change at pace — because if you create the rails within which innovative tech companies can operate then amazing things can happen.
If you told me two years ago that I’d be doing things like compliance work, I’d have definitely been surprised. But today, compliance is a part of my role I really enjoy. I like working with outside bodies like NHS Digital and sometimes think of myself as being a bit like a bridge between them — with everything they have to do and all the pressure they’re under — and us here at Accurx with everything we’re trying to do ourselves.
There’s been laughter, tears… and a letter from data guru Fiona Caldicott
Two years in and I already have lots of fond memories. For example, when we were developing Record View, we were working on making the product safe and secure and enabling users and patients to get maximum benefit from it. At the time, the National Data Guardian, Dame Fiona Caldicott, sent a letter addressed to me personally saying she thought our approach was good. That was a really exciting moment, particularly after months of work.
Today, over 60% of GP practices nationwide have switched Record View on, making it a powerful foundation for record sharing across the entire healthcare system. To add to that, one of our meeting rooms is actually named ‘Caldicott’ in our new office.
Another memory that stands out is the final Show and Tell of the year in 2020. Everyone was back in lockdown and things felt a little bleak. A close colleague and I worked with a videographer to make a 2020 wrap up video (despite having about a million other things going on at the time!). We invited some of our super users along, the whole company was there and Jacob made a speech thanking everybody for everything we’d done that year. Lots of us started crying. It was a real emotional moment!
Looking back, I really wouldn’t change the experience I’ve had at Accurx over the last two years. It’s been everything I hoped it would be and more. It’s certainly answered that question I started with: ‘how do you build a company from the ground up?’.
For me, the answer comes back to having strong foundations based on shared values that empower all of your employees to use their judgement to make decisions at pace. If you bring together a group of people who are as passionate about a mission as we are and trust them to make things happen, they will.
My team’s just one example of this. Having recently been joined by my brilliant colleague Will, we’ve now started spinning up our new Supplier Ops function to formalise lots of the work that I’ve been doing for the past two years. The function will help us act as a trusted and key supplier in the system to get new products and functionality assured, keep up with our assurance on key public procurement frameworks and affect positive change in the healthcare system. Because after all, that’s what Accurx is all about.
Interested in joining Accurx? Check out our careers page for the latest roles.
