In September 2016, we launched Sapio Research based on the simple, but genuine, desire to do the work we enjoyed with people we liked. Ten years on, we’ve worked with the likes of Cisco, Palo Alto, Shopify, Workday, Slack, Mailchimp, Visa and Paysafe, have a dedicated team of 22 people and developed one of the world’s first AI platforms to extract stories from survey data.
We’re also really proud to use our skills to give back, a big part of which is working with the charity sector. Over the years we’ve worked with charities such as Girlguiding, Kidney Research UK, Hestia, Melanoma Focus and are about to launch our 6th Charity Research Giveaway.
We met early in our careers at a market research agency in Tonbridge, Kent. It was as un-glamorous as it could be; a small office in the middle of an industrial estate. Excitement was a Friday afternoon walk into the town to get a Boots meal deal, or a team lunch at Wetherspoons! Not long after we met there were some changes in that agency and four of us decided to team back up and start our own agency. Our other co-founders were Guy Washer and Jane Hales, more senior figures who brought in experience and client relationships, while we focused on the delivery of research projects.
But what happened after the initial “let’s do this”? We needed a name!
One of our first overriding (and shared) memories is being sat at a table in a country pub, at a meeting called specifically to settle on our name. We landed on Sapio, the Latin verb for “I know” or “I understand,” we thought a fitting choice for an agency whose job is to make sense of data on a client’s behalf. We then called in some favours; one university friend designed the logo for free, and a school friend built our first website for £500.
By October 2016, we were open for business.
Year one revenue exceeded our expectations
Our first big win was a recurring £4,000-a-month contract with Loudhouse, then part of Octopus PR (now Publicis Pro). This gave us our first steady income – work we could eventually draw a salary from.
The start was tough, and we went unpaid for 6 months, working long hours, and navigating other (unexpected) challenges. It was a big moment when we felt we had enough money in the bank to finally pay ourselves! It confirmed to us that this was a real opportunity, and we were offering a valuable service to our clients. As our first financial year came to a close we posted £700,000 in revenue, much more than we had anticipated.
Data-driven business and the surge in demand for market research
Guy’s departure in 2018 was a turning point for Sapio, forcing us to ask ourselves what we wanted from the company and to do some business planning. This coincided with a steep rise in demand for market research largely driven by a growing trend in the business world to be more data-driven in strategy, decision-making and marketing thought leadership. Within a year, our revenue had more than doubled to £1.5 million.
In 2019, we landed our first £100,000+ project. It was one of those story-defining moments, as it shaped the direction we took from there and gave us real belief in what we could offer clients. The work kept coming in, and we were growing as a team, by then we had 18 employees.
COVID-19 – a challenge and an opportunity
Six months before Covid hit, our newly hired Office Manager, Sheila Duke (who is now our longest standing member of staff!) had just moved us to a new office. March 2020 and lockdown was here. We had to abandon our lovely new office (and the plants we’d got everyone for their desks!) and move to a fully remote way of working.
The first few weeks were worrying. Client projects were being put on hold, we’d just hired a new team member and didn’t know if we’d be able to keep everyone employed. However, a few months in and our worries were soon left behind. The projects that were paused came back and demand reversed sharply as clients rushed to understand what was happening through Covid.
We also noticed that there were a lot of trackers being published, but they were heavily skewed towards consumer sample, with very little speaking about businesses. We decided to fill this gap and built our B2B-specific COVID barometer. We used this to own the conversation around business confidence during Covid, as well as to support our clients by giving them Pro-bono questions for their own thought leadership.
Developing and maintaining our company culture
Sapio’s values and culture are built on our own personal values as founders: being supportive, friendly, getting great work done, and giving back to the community. As a business grows, maintaining a culture becomes more of a challenge and it’s something we continue to pay great attention to.
Between 2022 and 2023, our headcount nearly doubled from 10 to 19 employees and taught us how challenging it is to hold on to our culture while expanding the team. This bit doesn’t really get easier, and we’re still learning!
We both firmly believe in giving people opportunities and chances but doing that well while growing takes real intention. It’s part of why we refreshed our company values a few years ago and continue to keep them very much front of mind whenever we do any hiring or business planning – our values are not a tick-box for Sapio.
Innovation and technology in market research to maximise ROI
We are a young, digitally native and forward-thinking team and a key success factor for Sapio has been our dedication to innovation – both in terms of processes and technology. We like to think we ripped up the rule book and constantly seek out efficiency gains and ways to bring added value to our clients’ research projects in an increasingly data-saturated world.
We launched Data 2 Story last year, one of the world’s first AI platforms that queries and interprets research data to unearth more insights and stories from that data. This helps our clients maximise their ROI from their research projects.
What makes Sapio Research different?
Our client list now spans some of the biggest names across industries such as IT, cybersecurity, fintech, human resource management, and PR agencies.
Much of that growth traces back to relationships built over years, not one-off wins. A single PR contact opened doors that led to several of those long-standing accounts. Clients who had worked with us earlier in our careers followed us to Sapio Research because they already knew us and trusted our work.
Our clients value our approach, not least our uncompromising focus on data confidence in all research projects. We seek out new technology to fuel our efforts for efficiency and added value…not for its own sake.
Our advantage is the human expertise we’ve kept in-house like sampling, scripting, fieldwork and analysis which all sit within our own Sapio team rather than being outsourced. This means we understand a project well enough to catch what an outsourced partner might miss, and clients get a genuine consultative service, not just a delivered dataset.
Our three-year plan includes deepening our expertise in the sectors we already serve most, including cybersecurity and fintech, and using AI to take on more of the repetitive work so we can spend more time on the thinking clients value.
Ten years ago, we decided to give this a go because we liked the work and liked each other. A decade and hundreds of projects later, that’s still the part we come back to.
