Small business, frustrated with expensive phone lines and broadband? Meet XLN Business Services.
XLN is a fixed-line telecoms provider, but focused very much on a niche market — the small business, one-to-ten employee market. So your high street travel agents, your small two-man accounting firm — the backbone of the British economy, as founder Christian Nellemann would say.
We really like that because that niche enabled XLN to compete against the former monopoly provider, British Telecom, for the last ten years.
Our affordable phone lines and broadband have improved the lives of thousands of customers. At XLN we know small business better than anyone.
So what attracted me to ECI when we made the investment was a number of things. One — they’re very smart people. They had great enthusiasm for my business and they got to understand it very quickly.
We don’t pour our money into expensive TV ads or the consumer market, and you won’t find us handing out inflated corporate salaries from shiny new offices. We simply pass our savings on to you.
For every new investment we make, the first hire — and the most important for us — is always getting the right chairman on board. I think that relationship between us, the chairman, and the CEO is of paramount importance, and if you get that right at the beginning it’s a really powerful combination. The chairman is someone that the CEO respects, someone they can use as a sounding board when they’ve got challenges in the business — someone that’s been there and done it.
I think we were really fortunate to work with John Dawson, who was a prior ECI chairman of Late Rooms and in the auto space — successful investments for ECI, particularly in the online space. John’s got a great track record of working with entrepreneurs and he understands how entrepreneurs work — that it’s not the same linear path that you have with a corporate.
ECI invests in management. ECI is not here to run a business — that is my job. They’re here to support me and help me develop the business and run it as best as possible. So what you see them bring to the table is governance, but also process and a different way of thinking. They’ve opened up an immense network of very smart people, they’ve helped me find and pick a superb chairman, they’ve opened up our ability to recruit, but also to get interim management, consultants, or advisers in. It’s been invaluable.
Your business keeps the same telephone number, and if anything goes wrong, your lines are still repaired by BT Openreach.
I think there’s something hugely exhilarating about working with entrepreneurs of the calibre of Christian — he’s taken a business from a standing start and created something of huge value in a few short years, and I really get a kick out of working with entrepreneurs like that.
ECI was incredibly supportive — they had complete trust in me and my management team. But they brought in advisers, experts from various areas, consultants, and together we formulated a new strategy that we’ve now been pursuing with two acquisitions within 24 months. So they are both flexible and supportive, and they add a lot of rigour, thought, and process to the whole process, which is invaluable.
If you are a brand new startup or have grown from small business roots, we can switch or set you up immediately — and what’s more, we can save you money on other essentials like business mobile, energy, and card processing.
We were delighted with the outcome — three times our money over four years. XLN going to a new investor that could continue to help them deliver what they want to achieve, Christian very happy with the outcome — I think it was a great result for all concerned.
I think the thing that ultimately attracted the new investor to XLN was the same things that attracted us to XLN in the first place — that recurring revenue, that utility-like nature. Customers always need to have their telephone line and, increasingly now, broadband. The fact that most of the customers pay by direct debit, so that monthly working capital cycle of cash flow you really could count on, and the ability to de-risk your investment very quickly through significant cash generation on a monthly basis.
Put simply, we’re a one-stop solution to all your small business needs. XLN Business Services — The Small Business Specialist.
