Tech Companies to Watch - Where are They Now? FourJaw

The Candidate is delighted to share that we are once again sponsoring the Prolific North Tech Companies to Watch list! This list provides a fantastic opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the region's most promising tech startups, showcasing their potential for growth and innovation.

As part of our Where are They Now campaign, we've caught up with some of last year's most exciting list-makers to see how they've thrived over the last 12 months, and how being part of this prestigious list has impacted their journey.

FourJaw is an innovative manufacturing analytics platform. Their machine monitoring software caters to manufacturers aiming to enhance productivity and discover production process efficiencies, all while avoiding unnecessary investments in time or money on additional equipment. With a commitment to user-friendliness and efficiency, Fourjaw empowers engineers and designers to bring their ideas to life seamlessly. We caught up with Chris Iveson, CEO and Tech Entrepreneur, to talk all things growth, innovation, and the importance of building an amazing team...

Robin Hartley-Willows and Chris Iveson, Founders of FourJaw

When FourJaw made it onto the "25 Tech Companies to Watch" list back in 2022, what were your main goals and aspirations as a business? Have those goals changed or evolved since then?

FourJaw is a manufacturing data analytics platform that was originally developed to enable manufacturers of all sizes to maximise productivity. Back in 2022 our technology primarily focussed on capturing real-time machine data so manufacturers could see where the biggest inefficiencies were in their manufacturing operations, and use that data to take corrective action, improving efficiency and increasing productivity.

As a technology company that prides itself on continuously innovating, and in response to the energy crises that developed in 2022, our development team worked on how we could use our existing technology to capture energy usage data from machines. Our goal was to provide energy monitoring and carbon footprint data to our existing customer base at no extra cost, helping them to see where energy is wasted and how to reduce energy costs and become more sustainable.

This addition to our technology has enabled us to uniquely combine machine productivity and energy usage data to drive efficient, profitable and sustainable manufacturing processes for our clients.  

Being recognised as one of the industry’s rising stars in the North is an amazing achievement! How has it impacted your company's visibility and growth in the tech scene?

Being a relatively new tech business (we turned 3 this month) being recognised in industry lists and shortlisted (and hopefully winning) awards is great. Not only does it give you an opportunity to reflect on the progress being made by the team and business we’ve built, but it also helps create a good level of visibility among industry peers, the investment community as well as our own customer base.  It also helps when recruiting. Attracting the right type of talent to a new business can have its challenges even with a great product. Being featured in lists such as Prolific North Tech Companies to Watch is definitely helpful when trying to attract talent from across the region.

What are the major milestones or achievements your company has hit since the list came out? What's been your proudest moment during this time?

The last 12-months have been quite the journey. We launched two major product releases to market, and we have gained significant traction within the market we operate off the back of this.  In the last 12 months we have more than doubled the size of our customer base and now serve customers in each corner of the world, resulting in revenue growth of more than 400% YOY and our team size doubling. So, what’s been our proudest moment? Seeing our team, collectively, make this happen.

No doubt the tech journey comes with its fair share of surprises. Have there been any unexpected challenges or hurdles along the way, and how did you manage to tackle them?

Although we’re a SaaS business, our technology incorporates a piece of IoT hardware which is used to ‘collect’ the data from the machines and send it up to our cloud-based software. It would be this piece of hardware that would provide us with a surprise in the last year. The hardware uses a chipset that you’ll have probably heard in the news has been in very short supply since the world came out of lockdown. The global shortage of this chipset meant prices skyrocketed and supply pretty much dried up. Quite the problem to have. Thankfully, our development team went into ‘innovation mode’ and managed to find a similar technology that wasn’t in such a short supply. The change in the chipset meant we had to redevelop elements of our software and very quickly product test it to ensure it was as reliable and robust as our original hardware. Fast forward a few months and the global chip supply shortage seems to have all but disappeared, so we are able to use our original technology footprint but thanks to the response of our development team, now have a solid ‘fallback’ should we ever require it.

Are there any new and exciting products, services, or projects you've launched or are planning to launch after making it on the list?

Our business model and product offering are all about continuous innovation and as I mentioned in a previous question, we have launched two major product updates in the last year.

The first was FourJaw 2.0, this update focussed on delivering a brand-new user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) for machine operators who use our real-time web app when logging machine downtime.  The second major release was energy monitoring. Our development team worked to see how we could use our existing technology to capture energy usage data from machines.

Our team is currently working on additional functionality to complement our productivity and energy monitoring manufacturing analytics platform and our next product release will happen in late Q4. Watch this space!

How has your team grown or changed over the past year? Did you bring in some fresh talent or venture into new territories?

In the last year the team has more than doubled, going from nine employees at the start of last summer to 20 today. In the last 12-months, we’ve also established our first leadership team. Due to the growth we’ve seen we’re continuing to recruit for a number of new roles in our customer success and software development team to enable us to accelerate our product roadmap and continue to provide the best service possible to our existing and new customers.

Collaboration and partnerships can be vital for growth in the tech sector. Have you joined forces with other any companies, organisations, or institutions that have positively influenced your progress?

We actively engage with the memberships and alliances within the manufacturing sectors our customers operate. Engaging with such organisations enables us to keep up to date with the latest challenges, opportunities and outlook for the manufacturing sector. We are also very lucky to be in the same building as a technology development and consultancy firm called The Curve. Since the early days, they have been an important ‘partner’ in helping us make our tech stack as innovative, reliable and robust as possible. And having them in the same building means it’s very easy to collaborate with them when required.

Can you give us a sneak peek into any exciting future plans or upcoming initiatives your company has in store?

All I can say is watch this space! We have a lot of exciting new features as well as a number of improvements to the features already in the platform planned over the coming months.

Looking back at your journey since being featured on the list, what advice would you give to aspiring tech start-ups or companies hoping to make a similar impact in the industry?

Build an amazing team!

An amazing team consists of great people within your business, plus a small group of mentors who have either start-up or industry specific experience. These two things are both crucially important to growth and success!

Is there anything else you'd like to share with us?

From the food you eat, to the clothes you wear, to the car you drive- everything you interact with on a daily basis has been manufactured in one way or another. Productive manufacturing is therefore vital to a prosperous society.

We are absolutely delighted to be entering our third year in such a strong position. We were founded with a clear mission. To deliver accessible technology that empowers manufacturers to achieve their productivity potential and it is incredibly rewarding to see manufacturers achieving this with our technology.

Thank you Chris!

You can find out more and nominate your business for the 2023 list by clicking here.

(Images used in this blog are accredited to The University of Sheffield)

Take a look at all of our live jobs!

Check out our latest opportunities in:

You can also read our latest blogs on industry news and advice!