10 questions for Jess Ratcliffe, founder of GaBoom

The easiest way to explain GaBoom is …
a peer-to-peer video game swapping website. Members list the games that they want and the games that they have to swap; GaBoom then matches members together who can make a swap and offers a simple and secure way of posting their games to one another.

The idea came…
from the fact that I used to swap my video games with my friends and neighbours and one day thought, “wouldn’t it be awesome if we could swap our games with other people from around the UK”. I first had the idea to create GaBoom when I was 15 years old.

When I told my friends about my idea for GaBoom they said…
“Go for it!” My friends and family have been extremely supportive and are a great support network. They’re always there for me to bounce ideas off them and give me honest feedback. My parents were particularly supportive when I made my decision to leave University to focus on GaBoom full-time.

How did you know it was the right time to leave University and work on GaBoom fulltime…
I knew it was time because I was spending all of my time on GaBoom and not attending lectures. Having had this idea since I was 15, I knew I had to seize the opportunity to start GaBoom and put all my time and energy into making it a success.

Favourite moment in the GaBoom journey so far…
has been surviving the ‘Dragons’ when I appeared in the Series 8 finale of Dragons’ Den last September. I had a great experience on the show and received some fantastic comments, particularly from Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden.

The biggest challenge to overcome…
is finding a team. I’ve found it difficult to find and build a reliable team. I currently work on GaBoom by myself, but wish I had a team to help me take GaBoom forward.

A unique factoid/statistic that surprises people about GaBoom is…
people are always surprised when I tell them the size of GaBoom’s potential audience in the U.K, which is the number of people that play video games. The figure is 33.7 million people.

If you weren’t doing GaBoom …
I’d like to think I would have found a different idea to work on. I’ve wanted to start my own business for a very long time, so I don’t think I would have stopped trying if I wasn’t working on GaBoom.

The greatest advice anyone has given you about running a start-up…
is “You’ve got to be hungry!” - advice I live by. Although it isn’t meant literally, if you’re hungry, you’ll do everything in your power to find food. It reminds me to work hard and do everything I can to make GaBoom a success.

Name four people you would like to meet one day…
it would be my dream to meet Sir Richard Branson, Pierre Omidyar, Meg Whitman and Oprah Winfrey. It’s my goal to meet them all one day!

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POSTED IN: CC Pioneers and Protagonists / FOR: September 3, 2011