© THE FINANCIAL TIMES LIMITED 2015

TUESDAY 23 JUNE 2015

In Silicon Valley, the garage is thefirst home of many a techstartup in popular imagination.In northern England, it should

be the barn.Where cattle once sheltered,

Michael Gould first developedsoftware that is used by some of theworld’s biggest companies. Hiscompany Anaplan styles itself the“spreadsheet killer” because itscloud-based software enablesbusiness planning on a singlesystem. It has conquered territoryfrom IBM, Oracle and SAP.“The tools that were out there

were not really meeting the needsof businesses,” he says. So he cameup with his own.Mr Gould started the seven-year-

old company in a converted barn athis North Yorkshire farmhouse andhas kept it true to its origins bydividing re search work between

the nearby cathedral city of Yorkand San Francisco, where it has itsheadquarters.The core research work remains

in the north of England, however,and Anaplan last year moved to a19th century former warehouse onthe bank of the river Ouse. Sixyears ago, the warehouse wasflooded. Now it has been revamped, including raised windows on theground floor that would allowpeople to continue working if theriver rose again, although there isan escape bridge from an upperfloor. The building has balconiesand bike racks, plenty of light andbright carpets, along with the freefood beloved of tech companies.A decent workspace is vital to at

tract decent workers, says MrGould.Anaplan’s 30,000-plus clients

include Kimberly-Clark, Diageo

and Aviva. HP — itself founded in aPalo Alto garage — says Anaplanhas sharply cut the time taken toset targets for thousands of salesreps across the globe. Before that, itsays, “the data sat in disconnectedspreadsheets around the world”.Guy Haddleton, Anaplan’s first

investor and now chairman, ismore effusive: “Michael’s anincredible mathematician with aphenomenal talent for coding.”That talent attracted $100m of

funding from Workday and ShastaVentures, among others, forAnaplan last year, for anundisclosed stake.Anaplan charges a subscription

for its products, and Mr Gould saysbookings more than doubled in2014, but he dec lines to revealturnover. Revenues are ploughedback into funding expansion: “Weprobably could be profitable [now]

Michael Gould, Anaplan: fromcowshed to spreadsheet killerANDREW BOUNDS

FT.COM

if we wanted to be.”Anaplan is in the process of

opening a development centre inParis to widen its access tosoftware engineers. “We felt likewe probably weren’t going to beable to expand fast enough here inYork and in San Francisco and soit made sense to have a thirdlocation for the developmentteam,” says Mr Gould.Mr Gould learnt to code thanks

to a teacher who brought acomputer in to school and ran anafter-school club: “He was learningabout it himself. A couple of stepsahead of the pupils, and sharinghis interest and enthusiasm withus.”There seems little structured

opportunity for school students tolearn real programming, helaments. Some Anaplan employeeshelp at coding clubs in Yorkschools.Mr Gould says Anaplan would

not have made it without the“faith” shown by Mr Haddleton,with moral support and moneythat allowed him and a small teamto focus on a fully fledged productbefore needing to make sales. Buthe adds: “We never had doubtsthat the problems we were tryingto solve were real and that we hada solution that could addressthem.”There is a computerlike logic to

his answers to questions. On howto sell software: “By making itbetter than what is on the market.”On winning financial backing: “Ifyou’ve got customers who raveabout your product it’s easy.” Onhow a programmer, such as

himself, copes when an idea for aproduct becomes a fast-growingbusiness: get a chief executive in,he says. “I am a technical person,not a sales person.” His role is chieftechnology officer.The first CEO was Mr Haddleton.

They had worked together atAdaytum Software, which wasfounded by the New Zealander in1990 in Bristol and sold to IBMCognos in 2003 for $160m. MrGould stayed on to update a 20-year-old Cognos program but “itfelt like it needed a completerethink, a complete ground-uprebuild”. He left to work on hisown software in the barn. Withfour school-age children, it was arisk but a calculated one. He andhis wife have also adopted threeyoung children.After 18 months he showed the

results to Mr Haddleton in 2008.“He understood the vision fromthe outset,” says Mr Gould. He alsohad the money and the pairbecame 50/50 partners with$500,000 from Mr Haddleton.Anaplan made its first sales in

2010, and within a year had raisedits first venture capital funding.That paid for an outside CEO, FredLaluyaux.Mr Gould says he does not mind

diluting his stake in Anaplan,which is un disclosed, because “weneed muscle” to compete withbigger, established rivals.The company is now wrestling

with the challenges of growth. Ithas 12 offices worldwide and hasincreased staff to more than 400over the past year, rising to apredicted 650 this year. It has long

had a sales office in San Franciscoand started hiring developers therelast year. But York, where staff willhave doubled to 90 over a coupleof years, is the secret weapon, MrGould says.“Here, it’s a bit harder to find

people but we get a very high rateof people accepting job offers. It’svery rare that we actually loseanyone, too. And it’s a lovely placeto live.”York is a medieval walled city of

200,000 people, two hours fromLondon and five from Paris bytrain. It has two universities, whileLeeds and Bradford, which havegrowing tech sectors, are about 30miles away.San Francisco has plenty of

coders, says Mr Gould, but also lotsof employers. “Everywhere, it’schallenging to find peop le. We aretrying to grow fast, we’re trying togrow our engineering teams, rampthem up very quickly . . . There’sclearly a shortage of skills.”Mr Gould says his daily life

comprises work or family. But hemakes time for family holidays,when they head off to remotelocations where WiFi is patchy.That al most cost him a funding

deal in 2011. “One time when[Anaplan was] trying to get a firstround of VC funding, we werecamping in Northumberland. I hadto drive off overnight to get amobile phone signal to be able todo a conference call with a VC firmin the US.”Now, he says, they call him at his

convenience.