'The best people for the job in tech today tend to be diverse'

BOBBY Idogho confidently names three reasons why he quit corporate life as a management consultant to start his own digital agency. “I knew how key creativity was in tech, and realised that most businesses’ customers are incredibly diverse, from different socio-economic backgrounds, and ethnicities, and neuro-diversities.

- Lucy Tobin

But if you have a team of middle-aged, white Oxbridge graduates, they’re only going to think like middle-aged white Oxbridge graduates. I wanted to do something differently.”

He also wanted to address the skills gap: “I aspired to establish the kind of consultancy that I, personally, would want to work in.”

There was also a more personal reason why Idogho decided, at 25, to set up his own firm. “I was trying to put more black CEOs on the map,” he says. “I am almost unique to the business world today, which I feel needs to be addressed.”

Idogho had joined Deloitte in Ireland on its tech consultancy team straight after graduating from Trinity College, Dublin. “I felt the clichéd thing of being a small cog in a big machine — in such a large organisation it’s hard to really feel like you’re making an impact.”

Idogho decided to move to London, first working at a small digital agency, then teaming up with co-founder Oliver Smit to set up Radically Digital.