Meet the tech entrepreneur who turned her back on a high-flying corporate career

In January 2017 Michelle Cowan was at the top of the corporate world. She was sales director for one of the largest technology companies across the globe in Cisco.

The Huddersfield born and bred boss was selling into the Indian conglomerate Tata.

She was on the plane back from a holiday of a lifetime with her husband and two sons, who were 12 and 14 at the time, having taken in Singapore, New Zealand and Hong Kong.

Despite being on top of the world, Ms Cowan felt she was missing out on something.

“I’d never spent that much time with my family,” she says. “Even though, if I wasn’t travelling, I was at home. I was still working constantly.”

Soon after this trip, Ms Cowan lost a close childhood friend who “just dropped dead on his mountain bike”.

The day after one of her friends lost a son in a barn fire. All of this made Ms Cowan re-evaluate her life.

She said: “I just thought, what am I doing? I could see life passing me by. Lots of people talk about life-changing moments and a kind of awakening and that’s what it felt like.”

There was one catch though. After 17 years at Cisco, she had become an integral part of operations.

Ms Cowan says she had a team that “I’m like a mother to” and she didn’t just want to hand in her pass and laptop and exit the building.

She added: “I resigned and it took me about three or four months to get out. One because I was a director but also because I really wanted to leave on a high.”

Ms Cowan wanted to “leave with grace” and she did just that – even recruiting her replacement.

“While I knew I had a stressful and quite a high-power job, I always thought I was managing it,” she says. “When I look back I think I was just keeping the wheels on. I just felt exhausted. I’d kind of promised myself and my husband that I would look for another job in September but September came and went because I just wasn’t ready.”

It was at this point Ms Cowan began to realise that she wouldn’t be returning to corporate life again. However, while visiting a beautician, she had a lightbulb moment.

Ms Cowan said: “I’ve known the owner for a long time and I said to her you need to get your act together with social media.

“All these local businesses are on Facebook and Twitter and you are not doing any of that. She just looked at me and said I never know what to write, I don’t have enough time and I can’t really afford to employ someone to do it.”

She got in touch with an old acquaintance, Brendan Adams, and the two set up Justo Software.

Justo’s first brand was My Smart App. It was an app to make managing social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn easier for small businesses, freelancers and sole traders.

Running Justo has proved eye-opening for Ms Cowan. While she no longer has the pressure of a top corporate role, the tech entrepreneur now has to manage all the things she took for granted when part of the behemoth that is Cisco.

Ms Cowan said: “I’ve had the cushion of corporate life my whole life. If I want to put in an expense claim, I just go onto an online portal. I’ve got HR, legal support and accounting support coming out of my ears.

“When you are a start-up you are everything. You are wearing every hat. The only hat that I don’t wear in our business is the creative one. That’s what my business partner does and that is what I brought him in for.”

Following the coronavirus outbreak last March, the duo decided to take the platform offline to deal with some technical issues.

They also decided that it would be a good time to move away from the generic ‘Smart’ tag in the name. The app is now back as socialsendr.

Ms Cowan’s career in the technology industry started three decades prior, when she worked for a small PC building company in Leeds.

“I went and did some work experience with them and they ended up offering me a job,” she said. “That’s how I got into the whole business to business sales environment.”

From there she moved to a Lancashire-based technology company called P&P. In 1997, Ms Cowan landed at Apple.

“I worked at Apple when Steve Jobs released the iMac,” she said. “That was a really exciting time in the IT industry. I was going out selling to creatives and design agencies. I was having an absolute ball because it was an open door.”

However, Ms Cowan found herself restricted by Apple’s homogeneous approach to business so when her sales director made the jump to Cisco, she followed shortly after.

Over the past three decades, the co-founder of Justo Software has seen a huge change in gender diversity in tech but still feels that there is much to do.

Ms Cowan is also a STEM ambassador, encouraging teenage girls to consider pursuing a career in tech.

Back to Justo Software, Ms Cowan hopes to ultimately have a variety of different products following socialsendr’s relaunch.

“My vision is that Justo Software will have five or six different brands that sit underneath it, which will all be revenue generating, and we have a staff that are working towards making these brands successful and perhaps developing new brands,” she said.

Going into business for herself, enables Ms Cowan to help other small firms but more importantly it has given her what she craved while in the corporate world. That is a better work-life balance.

But in closing the corporate door, others have opened and the entrepreneur has become a non-executive director of the Huddersfield-based software development company Torchbearer, which has been working on Justo Software.

She’s also a governor of a primary school in Birstall and has a podcast with a friend called Two Northern Lasses.

“I’ve got a lot of hats and it sounds like I’ve got a really busy life but I’ve definitely got the balance,” she says.

“What I really have is that I’m a more present person. If I’m at home with the children, and I’m not working, then I’m with them.”

Curriculum vitae

Job title: Co-founder and managing director of Justo Software, home of socialsendr

Date of birth: March 3, 1969

Education: Degree level

First job: Selling fruit and vegetables on a market stall

Favourite holiday destination: Spain

Favourite film: Anything 007

Favourite song: Your Song – Elton John

Last book read: The Go Giver by Bob Burg – for the 10th time.

Car driven: RR Evoque – sat on the drive most of the time these days

Most proud of: My two sons, Dylan and Dexter

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James Mitchinson