There is a clear determination in Patience Tucker’s eyes – even over a Zoom call with a sickly child in the next room.
The 41-year-old CEO of wi-Q, mother of two young boys, has never shied away from the reality of balancing family life with building a fast-growing business.
“The number of times that I’ve been on a call while breastfeeding or had my baby in a sling… with big-name clients too!” she tells TechBlast.
“I’m not going to apologise for that because the alternative is that you don’t get my time and you don’t get the business moving forward.”
Corporate star
Former corporate star Tucker joined wi-Q in 2014 and helped build the business almost from the ground up – first as head of partnership solutions then global sales director and now CEO.
Seventh on our sister publication BusinessCloud’s FinTech 50 ranking last year, the cloud-based mobile ordering solution allows customers to order and pay from a menu of services by simply scanning a QR code, entering a URL or being redirected upon accessing WiFi.
Demand for its services has surged following an increased focus on digitalisation in the hospitality sector, accelerated by COVID. It has a deal with a fast casual business group with 2,500 sites across major chains, as well as a major global hotel company. Today the business employs 60 staff and is live in 55 countries.
“I’ve implemented ‘deep work Wednesday’ for the whole company,” says Tucker. “It allows everybody to not have any internal meetings or messages, and catch up on things that they need to do for other people. I do seem to get quite a lot of stuff done on Wednesdays!”
VC funding
wi-Q took on £3 million of growth investment from Praetura Ventures in September 2022 and now has a seven-strong operational board.
“I’ve been involved in every pocket of the business for so long – now I’m trying to get everybody to take the elements from me. It is quite difficult!” she says candidly. “I think the sooner you break that cycle of doing everything yourself, the better.
“In my board meetings now, I say ‘come to me with three problems and three solutions – including your best one – and we’ll just agree on the best solution’. If you come to me with problems, I might as well have dealt with it myself.
“It means as a board we can collectively agree and move on to next thing; otherwise, you get stuck in that rut of ‘Oh my God, there’s so much to do!’”
Advice
Tucker remains as driven to succeed as ever – and is clear with her advice for startup founders.
“Know your numbers, know where you’re going,” she says. “Also, finding the right partner in terms of funding is very, very key.
“And always lead with integrity: there are a few clients that are coming back round now that said we weren’t for them five years ago.
“If you promise the world and don’t deliver, the world is small – and the industry is even smaller.”