Great design, great ideas and the very best accountancy advice
Crunch is the product of years of industry experience and borne out of a desire to revolutionise the way we all do our accounts.
With an ex-HMRC accountant, a successful entrepreneur and a design-studio boss Crunch combines great user-experience with the knowledge and knowhow to get the job done - all at a great price.
As part of their commitment to the freelancer and contractor community Crunch sponsor the Freelance Advisor website and podcast and regularly contribute their knowledge and skills to the thriving freelance and contractor community.
Founders
The Entrepreneur
Darren FellFed up after 14 years in corporate telecoms, Darren Fell decided to risk it all on building a UK digital marketing agency, from scratch and with no investment. He founded email marketing specialist Pure - which began life as a party portal - in 2001, when he realised that the online email and SMS technology element was scalable and would become an essential business tool for brands. Seven years later and Pure was ranked in the top 3 specialist Digital Marketing Companies in the UK and named Best Small Business at the Sussex Business Awards 2006/07. Darren won Entrepreneur of the Year at the same ceremony in 2007/08, and also made the shortlist for 02 / Arena magazine's Entrepreneur of the Year competition. When it was sold in April 2008 Pure had over 850 customers and employed 45 staff. Never one to rest on his laurels, Darren spent most of the summer of 2007 and spring of 2008 working two jobs. Pure was his day job and a revolutionary accountancy practice called Crunch was his night job. It took two years (and a handsome amount of his and the other founders own cash) to create the brand and company but as you can see for yourself, it was time well spent. Other recent achievements and press
In the pressA collection of press clippings can be found here |
The Accountant
Steve CrouchA Co-founder of Crunch, Steve Crouch gained his initial experience working for HMRC, before specialising in International Taxation including Expatriates. Steve has had over 10 years of Taxation Management within a leading top ten UK Chartered Accountancy practice. Years spent in various industry sectors make Steve an invaluable source for those opting to integrate expert advice into their business. Steve is PCG accredited and an expert in all aspects of freelancer & contractor accounting, including IR35 and has spent several years working with the freelancer & contractor community and knows all the subtleties that are key to making Crunch an expert system for anyone setting up on their own. Steve is also a partner at SRC Accounting. Listen to Steve Crouch talk tax and accountancyPodcast #5: Five things you always wanted to ask your accountant – part 1Steve answers questions on salaries, dividends, section 660, IR35 and VAT
Podcast #6: Five Things you always wanted to ask your accountant – part 2Here Steve tells us about the types of expenses freelancers can claim such as those associated with working from home and some more general things to look out for Podcast #12: Are you IR35 Compliant?Accountant and tax expert Steve Crouch talks about the latest IR35 case, Dragonfly Consultancy |
The Digital Brain
Drew GriffithsA Co-founder of Crunch, Drew Griffiths was educated at Nottingham University gaining a Joint Honours degree in marketing, business and computing. Drew’s first exploration into the digital world involved transforming the predictive ordering process for a major high street jeweller to a digital solution, saving the buying department over 300 man-days a year in mundane number processing tasks. Now running a successful web agency, eMosaic, Drew was key in formulating an approach to a digital solution to solve problems people face in their day to day accounting requirements when running a business. |
Investors and Mentors
It's rare that any business is likely to gain such industry heavy weights however 2 key investors from the .com world suggests they see a future in Crunch's revolution in Accounting. For so long micro- businesses, freelancers and contractors have had to put up with a massive pain in their hectic working lives, dealing with their accounts and traditional Accountants.
Both Paul Birch, Bebo founder and Michael Van Swaaij, Ebay/Skype CEO/ Chairman have invested personally. Not simply for cash but to be involved in Crunch's day-today business. Founder and MD, Darren Fell benefits from regular conference calls, meetings and advice that could only ever insure that Crunch not only is a massive success, it radically changes Accounting for the micro-business market forever.
Paul Birch
The other half of Crunch's investing partnership, Paul Birch (along with his co-founders) sold social networking site Bebo to AOL for $850m in 2008. He is backing Crunch.co.uk as a result of his own experiences as a contractor.
"I used to work as a freelance IT contractor with my own Limited company - I tried two accountancy firms, but both seemed to have weak processes and use Excel spreadsheets as the mainstay of my interaction with them. When I met Darren and discussed Crunch I was immediately excited about the opportunity to offer simple steps for people to follow and deliver a great accounting service for the lowest price in the market."
Paul's own history starts with graduation from Imperial College London with a degree in Material Sciences, but more recent experience has led him to believe that the University of Life has much more to offer than traditional education he received.
Paul's working background is systems analysis but it is really his love affair with the Internet since the first day he went online back in 1996 that is the motivation for much of his modern outlook. He's been surfing the Internet ever since and has applied many surfing discoveries to his current business, BirthdayAlarm.
Michael Van Swaaij
After starting out in the microelectronics industry Dutch born Michael van Swaaij joined Bertelsmann AG, Europe's largest media company, initially in its music, TV and movies unit in 1994 as Director of New Technologies, advising on investment opportunities in the field of media. He joined one such investment, the Bertelsmann - America Online joint-venture in Europe in 1995, became Regional Managing Director responsible for the AOL and CompuServe businesses in several European countries.
He joined eBay in July 1999 to start up and run eBay's European operations through green-field start-ups as well as acquisitions. eBay Europe is now the largest ecommerce business in Europe operating in 9 countries with over 10 Billion Euros per year in trade.
In Dec 2005 Michael became Chief Strategy Officer for eBay Inc responsible for defining the strategic direction for the eBay Inc group of companies (eBay, PayPal, Skype) reporting to then CEO Meg Whitman. In 2007 Michael took on the interim CEO position at Skype and is now Skype's Chairman. Michael holds a master degree from the Technical University of Twente, a PhD from the Catholic University in Leuven and a MBA from INSEAD. He is on the advisory board of Cambridge University Judge Business School.
Crunch Crew
The crew are the life blood of both the Crunch software and the backbone of the support network. Crunch believes in the personal touch and if you're a Crunch customer, you probably already know these people quite well!
Justine Cobb
At the heart of Crunch's engine room is Justine.
Thoroughly experienced, Justine has been involved in a wide variety of challenging operational roles.
Initially starting off in clothing production for Marks & Spencer at Claremont Garments, but subsequently moving into more internet-centric roles at Infoline & Pure360 where she met the soon-to-be- Crunch-founder, Darren Fell.
Justine is a through and through operations director and is an expert in system and procedure development. It was vital that someone fresh to the world of Accounting approached the dismantling and rebuilding of a Chartered Accountancy practice and Justine with all of her experience was a perfect choice.
Crunch's back office technology and robust processes have led to Crunch achieving the normally unachievable, streamlining and automating time-consuming manual tasks and providing a level of customer care never seen before in the previously dusty world of accounting.
Nick Doyle
Nick is Crunch's Mr. I.T. He started out working on the internal and external systems for massive blue chip organisations like American Express and BUPA but, longing for a bit of independence, he took a leap of faith and co-founded a new business providing software for estate and letting agents. One of the first of its kind, Domus.net, proved a most successful enterprise.
Nick has been elbow deep in various coding projects ever since the early days of web-based software development, when web-applications began to take over from traditional server based systems in the late 1990s.
Latterly Nick has turned his considerable expertise to Enterprise Java technology (Crunch's chosen programming language for the security and reliability it provides) and now directs the maintenance and development of the master Crunch application.
In his own words: "Accountancy software is nothing new but what makes Crunch interesting is that anyone can use it. The system evolves with each and every day. We openly welcome feedback from our customers and their ideas or suggestions get fed into our software development roadmap."
