Case Study : Eco Tours (a stage name)

A client in real need of Venture Programmers

Our sister company (Celtic Internet) was approached in late summer 2007 to build a content managed website to launch a new Eco Friendly holiday company. Like most clients, the founder of Eco Tours arrived with a list of requirements as long as your arm! That would have been fine, but unfortunately the company had a small budget, insufficient to complete development to the desired scope and standard. It's a fact that most people have no idea of the final cost of bespoke development and fail to factor this accurately into their overall business planning.


The company was offered the development work in exchange for shares. But they turned the offer down, preferring to keep hold of the entire company, which may be only natural. They also knew they would have to surrender a large share to a venture capital company at some point to develop the business. Instead, they cut their Internet development requirements down to a bare minimum and paid for the work with the small budget available.


They now have a working website, many clients and a blossoming business. However, due to the limited development, their growth is behind schedule. Cash flow remains a problem and vital further development is still beyond their budget. The expected venture capital has not yet materialised, so growth of the company is stunted.


The company is in a catch 22 situation!  They can't afford to complete the website without more funds and the venture capital companies, although very interested in the idea, are unwilling to invest at this early stage, preferring to see Eco Tours grow a little more on its own before investing their money.


Eco Tours now accepts that exchanging a small share will enable the  business to reach full potential. By completing the development in liaison with Venture Programmers, they will move the business forwards to where venture capital companies will be eager to invest.


As a result, Eco Tours are now seeking a team of Venture Programmers to take their initial business and insightful ideas forward to build a financially successful business.

Case Study : Raileasy

Long term commitment to a technically challenging project

Our sister company (Celtic Internet ltd) was approached in late 2006 to help complete a project to build a rail ticket booking website: www.Raileasy.co.uk. That site is up, running an earning revenue.



Raileasy are now at the stage where they wish to expand the business but, unfortunately,  they are constrained by their initial booking engine. Raileasy required a re-write of their booking engine taking into account all the lessons learned from the initial development, to ensure that v2.0 was more easily maintained, more expandable and easier to integrate with third parties.

Raileasy could easily have paid for this development, however, they see the advantage in having a technology partner over simply engaging paid developers. As a result ,Venture Programmers have struck a deal with Raileasy to develop their v2.0 booking engine in exchange for equity in their company.

Raileasy foresee ongoing development carrying on for a considerable time beyond v2.0 and so have negotiated ongoing development and support beyond the initial v2.0 project. Venture Programmers expect a long a fruitful relationship with Raileasy.

Education Portal

A Venturist open to ideas

Venture Programmers were approached by Education Portal who were looking to recruit a team of developers and business analysts in order to build an International Education portal. Education Portal already had a roadmap for the entire project. They had broken the project into key milestones - the first being the need to build a team to get the project of the ground.

It was clear that a varied group of skills would be required of the project team - ranging from individual programmers with particular software skills, to business analysts and marketing professionals. Venture Programmers was in a position to identify and introduce two Programmers - one of whom had marketing experience gained on a similar project.



This Programmer was able to convince Education Portal to re-think their initial ideas on a target market by presenting an alternative strategy. Impressed, Education Portal offered shares to both Programmers, altered their marketing strategy and are in the process of not only achieving milestone 1, but a revenue stream 6 months ahead of schedule!