Somewhere between the fluorescent pink website homepage adorned with a pixelated T-Rex and risqué YouTube videos, you realise Brightbook isn’t really interested in playing by the rules.
At the very least, Brightbook is a welcome dose of joie de vivre in the often dry, homogenised arena of online bookkeeping. Fielding questions in a Kiwi accent that’s somehow simultaneously languid and rapid fire, the company’s co-founder Warwick Leicester seems to just be enjoying himself. Indeed, his entry into bookkeeping software doesn’t exactly have the air of destiny around it – it was more of a stumble.
“My co-founder James [Henderson] was doing his VAT. And his accountant was asking him for all kinds of things. It was a waste of a day,” explains Leicester. “Unbeknownst to him, I was experiencing the same thing, so I hacked together an invoicing system to deal with the problem. James used it, liked it, and suggested some changes and we put out the first version. From there, we developed completely organically through word of mouth.”
The bookkeeping service’s unique selling point is that it’s free of charge and unlimited. Technically, though, the services utilises what is known as a freemium model; making its money from two subscription features which cost £3.49 a month. “We have 27,000 businesses signed up and around 5% of those pay for subscription features,” says Leicester. That £3.49 a month removes any Brightbook branding from invoices sent to customers and allows users to create custom invoices.
Notably, Brightbook spends virtually no money on traditional marketing. As the firm’s YouTube channel illustrates, they’re not averse to guerrilla marketing – but it’s light-years from the blockbusting marketing budgets that one usually sees in the software industry. Leicester remains unconvinced by the charms of marketing.
But in terms of brand building, the company has been very deft at crafting itself an identity. The product brims with an irreverent sense of humour; its mascot is a brown suited, bespectacled man called Mr. Egghead. Arguably, the firm’s clever brand management emanates from Leicester’s co-founder James Henderson, a veteran creative director and designer.
The aversion to marketing hasn’t been the death sentence that many would expect; the firm has managed to gain traction. The company recently joined the Open Data Institute (a non-profit initiative founded by the godfather of the internet Tim Berners-Lee). Funding has also started to take off, “We received a £100,000 InnovateUK smart grant – which was lovely,” says Leicester in a stereotypically modest Kiwi manner.
Currently, the company is only staffed by an army of two – “We’re recruiting for four new jobs at the moment, though” – and it uses Brightbook to do its books alongside their accountant. “You need an accountant to use Brightbook,” says Leicester. “The user provides his accountant with a login, and you use it together. I like to think of us as the next step up from an Excel spreadsheet or a shoebox of receipts”.
Brightbook’s focus is extremely micro, and the community of users has become very eclectic. “We have users in a 150 different countries; Dominatrices, hairdressers, priests, electricians – you name it”. With the new investment, they’re weaselling away at a new version of the software. “I can’t say too much about it,” says Leicester. “In three to six months we will be well into it, but I think we’re well placed.”