Entrepreneur prepares to launch ninth venture from Howbery Business Park

An inspirational 24 year-old marketing and technology entrepreneur has expanded to new premises at Howbery Business Park as he prepares to launch his ninth business.

Venture Harbour, an umbrella brand for several e-commerce websites, is on track to double its turnover this year following a significant increase in revenue by up to 400 per cent per quarter for some of its projects.

Marcus Taylor, founder of Venture Harbour, is due to launch LeadFormly in April 2016, a new lead generation tool for freelancers, agencies and website owners to gain access to important data and generate more business leads.

Mr Taylor explains: “Our new venture is our most ambitious project to date as it’s our first time building a software application. Basically, the secret sauce that’s enabled us to grow so rapidly over the past year is that we’ve taken a lot of insights from behavioural psychology and applied them to building lead generation forms. The result is that we’ve tripled the number of leads for some of our websites just by changing the forms. So, we’ve built a tool that enables anyone to use the same insights we’ve come across to get more leads for their business.”

In addition to transforming a 650 sq. ft. office into a creative space for up to 12 members of staff, Mr Taylor has recently recruited an ex Google engineer and is searching for two full time employees to become a UX (user experience) designer and content / copywriting specialist.

Mr Taylor comments: “The new office means we shouldn’t have to move again for another 12 months and gives us the space to expand with amazing views over the park. We have designated one room as a creative space overlooking the grounds. Our working environment is extremely important for cultivating new ideas and looking for our next venture.”

Venture Harbour operates in a number of sectors including luxury travel (Qosy.co) music (MusicLawContracts.com) and finance – a venture that matches investors and traders with brokers (Brokernotes.co).

Donna Bowles of the Howbery Business Park Estates team, said: “Venture Harbour is growing extremely quickly and we are keen to help Marcus to ensure his entrepreneurial spirit remains focused on his nine businesses without having to worry about office moves and future expansion.”

Howbery Business Park, owned by HR Wallingford, has a diverse range of businesses on site with major occupiers including GTI Media and the Environment Agency. The park has planning permission to create 70,000 sq. ft. of new office space.