The Tool Desk
Outbyte Driver Updater FREEScan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteDriver Scan →Outbyte PC Repair FREEClear out junk files and repair common Windows errorsFree Scan →Richard Tavernor says founding a second technology company has made him quicker to act when an assumption or decision is clearly wrong. He calls that “immediacy,” not impatience. Drawing on his experience at iVendi and his work as CEO of Yoono, he reflects on hiring, international expansion, customer economics, technical leadership and the risks founders should examine early.
What does Tavernor mean by “less patience”?
For Tavernor, patience is not about making every decision hastily. It is about not letting a visible problem linger simply because changing course is uncomfortable. “I think of it less as impatience and more as immediacy,” he says in his BusinessCloud opinion article.
His account is personal rather than a general finding about repeat founders: he says experience has helped him recognise questionable assumptions sooner and act faster when something is clearly wrong. He also acknowledges that he does not have every answer; what has changed is how early he notices the questions.
Hiring: address a poor fit before delay compounds it
Tavernor calls people the biggest lesson from his first company. He says he made excellent hires, but also made appointments that were not right and took too long to address them. His point is not that every difficulty means an employee should be replaced: sometimes the role, expectations or support need to change. The lesson is to diagnose the mismatch early rather than letting uncertainty turn into prolonged inaction.
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“In an early-stage company, every hire has an outsized impact.”
That is Tavernor’s perspective on the stakes of early hiring, not a quantified comparison. In a small startup, a role mismatch can affect a larger share of the team’s work, making clarity about responsibilities and support especially important.
International expansion: a product must travel without being rebuilt
Tavernor says taking iVendi from the UK into Europe proved difficult because the product required substantial localisation and customisation. In his account, adapting it market by market consumed both time and capital. He says that experience influenced Yoono’s ambition: to address an international problem without having to rebuild the product’s core for every jurisdiction.
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That is a product-design goal, not evidence that Yoono has already solved every jurisdiction’s requirements. The distinction matters: international demand alone does not make expansion straightforward if local rules or customer needs require extensive changes to the underlying product.
Customer economics matter more than headline market size
Tavernor says he remains drawn to recurring revenue, regulated markets and problems customers have a clear imperative to solve. Compared with his earlier thinking, he says he pays closer attention to the potential value of each customer. A large addressable market is not enough if the cost and effort of serving customers do not support sustainable growth.
His framing shifts the question from “How big is the market?” to whether the company can serve its customers on economics that allow the business to grow sustainably. The article does not provide figures or a financial model for Yoono; these are the selection principles Tavernor says he uses.
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Technical leadership must evolve beyond the first version
Tavernor argues that startup technical leaders need two capabilities that do not always come together: hands-on work when resources are scarce, and the ability to build architecture, teams and standards as the organisation grows. A strong first release is only one stage of the job.
“The person who can create a brilliant first version is not automatically the person who can develop a global organisation.”
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For founders, the practical implication is to assess technical leadership against the company’s next stage as well as its immediate needs. The skills that get an early product working may differ from those needed to support a larger team and broader markets.
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Stress-test the business before its options narrow
Tavernor says founders should think about vulnerabilities beyond product execution. He points to incumbent responses, a route to market that fails, tighter access to capital and capabilities that become commonplace as risks worth considering. His advice is to avoid unnecessary dependencies, preserve options and understand what could weaken the business.
He frames the founder’s responsibility as understanding the kind of competitive and commercial game the company is playing—not assuming that a promising technology alone guarantees a durable business.
“The founder’s job is to understand which game the company is playing.”
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Tavernor’s questions for a founder
Tavernor closes with questions he says he now recognises earlier. They are his checklist, not a validated test or a guarantee of success:
- Is this creating real customer value?
- Can it scale internationally?
- Are we properly funded for the opportunity?
- Can we build distribution faster than others can copy the technology?
- What happens if one of our central assumptions is wrong?
- Above all, are we moving quickly enough?
BusinessCloud identifies Tavernor as Yoono’s CEO, but the accessible article page does not show a publication date. Its account of his experience and advice is his own; it does not independently corroborate the business history or establish that his approach will work for every founder.
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