Mark and Don joined the Cooper Project to develop their business, ‘Millenico’. We caught up with them to find out more about their business and to see how they are getting on.

Tell me a bit about the business.

The business is called ‘Millenico’ and we specialise in cloud technology such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and DevOps services, which involves working with software teams to fulfil the operational requirements for their technical tools, applications or platforms in development or production.

We work with private and public businesses on their digital transformations. Whether that be a migration project to a secure and scalable cloud infrastructure, or providing micro-service architectures to software companies to break up their monolithic applications.

How did you come up with this idea?

We knew we wanted to start a business together, so we brainstormed some ideas that we thought would work well and would utilise both of our strengths - I (Don) have technical knowledge and Mark is from a finance background. We have both lived and worked in the largest cities in the UK and we identified a gap in Sheffield for this type of business.

What is your unique selling point?

Our unique selling point is that we’ve gained valued knowledge from working with a range of businesses, mainly software companies. This knowledge combined with our hands-on experience, integrating with teams and heading up Agile projects, is a perfect combination to complement our services. We are also one of the few consultancies that offer Cloud and DevOps services and solutions within the Sheffield City Region, as a member of the Amazon Partner Network, with multiple certifications in business and technical architecture.

What are you working on at the moment?

Our focus is now on the public sector and the procurement of contracts and services. We’re also working on a platform to help software teams to on-board project members seamlessly and then track roles in a lifecycle of their software being developed.

How has the Cooper Project benefitted you?

We’ve gained lots of contacts and networked with other start-ups. It’s nice being able to discuss ideas with others within our working environment and support each other. The help and support is always there if you need it. It’s helped us to grow our business and we don’t think we’d be where we are today if we hadn’t been on the Cooper Project.

What’s your biggest achievement?

Our biggest achievement is definitely starting our business, as we never thought we’d get to where we are today. Also, a big achievement for us was winning our first contract, especially with the client being a global financial company. We’d worked extremely hard on this and put a lot of time into it.

What advice would you give to anyone wanting to start their own business?

I would advise them to go for it! There’s a lot of help around Sheffield and so many events available to help expand your knowledge of the business world. It’s hard work, but if you are passionate about what you’re doing and are determined, then I would recommend it.