Meet the reluctant starter who became a leader in the Leeds tech sector

In 2001, she enrolled as one of the first students on Leeds Beckett University’s then-new events management undergraduate course. After graduating in 2004, Ms Hendry was still trying to figure out what she wanted to do.

She said: “I never wanted to work in tech being completely honest. It was a sector I never thought I would work in.

“I finished university and I went backpacking. I came back and I got a job like anybody does just working in a cafe bar, trying to work out what I wanted to do next with my degree.”

That cafe bar belonged to Dr Adam Beaumont, who at the same time was working on his integrated communications business, aql.

“He said come and work for my other business,” Ms Hendry recalls. “I thought okay I’ll get some experience, I’ll just do three months, that turned into six months, that turned into 12 months. We’d grown the service set by that point and I found it fascinating.”

With that Ms Hendry was on her way to spending the next 15 years in the tech sector and eventually leading her own business.

She is the co-founder and managing director of digital transformation agency ddroidd. It specialises in technical delivery such as software engineering, application management and managed hosting.

ddroidd has 75 staff based in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. Ms Hendry is the only one based in Leeds but she says one of the key aims over the next year is to build out a team in the region.

She said: “We see Leeds being very much the centre for client management – project management roles, sales roles, we want to build up a sales team here.

“We’ve been looking at bringing in a sales graduate. Then we’re also looking at the account director type roles.”

The business is looking at adding six to ten staff members in Yorkshire over the next 12 months.

ddroidd was previously a joint venture between digital agency Delete and TEC Agency in Romania. The venture was at that point called Delete Application Management.

It became ddroidd after Delete was acquired by IT services firm Kagool and Ms Hendry, joined by Catalin Stancel, Nicu Bordea, Oana Bufnea and Traian Rus, decided to take it on as a standalone business last year.

In June 2019, Ms Hendry had joined Delete as head of managed services and security to help drive the joint venture. But three months in she joined the senior management team as operations director.

While she had the opportunity to join Kagool as group operations director after the acquisition of Delete, Ms Hendry opted to break out with ddroidd. One reason was the team that she had helped build.

Ms Hendry said: “I worked with them for a year and half. They’re phenomenal. You know when you click and share aspirations and a vision. We had that great working relationship. That was one key factor.”

The business was also mainly made up of technologists including Ms Hendry.

“We all had a background in tech and that was the side that interested us the most so being able to go out and build a company based on delivering great tech, supporting great tech,” she says. “Being able to focus the business on that was key for us.”

Launching in the middle of a pandemic was a difficult decision but retaining work from Delete helped give it a bit of runway.

The managing director of ddroidd said: “There were a lot of choices to be made but essentially we backed ourselves and the vision.

“It wasn’t a straightforward decision but we knew enough and we retained a supplier agreement with Delete because they wanted continuity of service. We knew we had probably a six-month runway to get us going.”

She added: “Launching a new brand and a new business in the marketplace is hard.

“It’s hard when you know you have the delivery skill sets but people don’t necessarily know who you are or you can’t attribute historic case studies to the work that you have done. Being new in a busy marketplace is a challenge.”

One of the biggest changes over her 15-plus years in tech has been remote working. It’s something that ddroidd has naturally embraced with its team based in Romania.

The other change is how people have embraced start-ups and how people are more willing to take risks to build a new business.

Ms Hendry said: “There wasn’t the support there within the industry – financing, coaching and mentoring – 15 years ago.

“There’s some great funding and mentoring that you can find now. Courses equip people and you leave university thinking I can create my own business and company.

“The industry is also shifting as well from thinking that utilising big blue chip companies is what guarantees you the end result.

“If you’ve got a £100,000 project and you give that to a big blue chip company you’re at the bottom of the pecking order. It’s a small project.

“But if you give that to a start-up or an SME, that’s a huge project for them and they will go out of their way to deliver.

“You’re now seeing start-ups that have huge name clients and they deliver time and time again.”

The other change is one that Ms Hendry herself represents. There is more diversity in the industry than when she first started.

“I’ve always been fortunate throughout my career to work with and for people that saw the benefit of having a diverse leadership team,” Ms Hendry says. While diversity is improving at leadership level, there is still a lot to be done, the tech entrepreneur adds. Her advice to young women considering a career in tech is to “do it”, pointing to a plethora of roles beyond just the technical ones as ways of breaking into the industry.

“There’s some fantastic opportunities and there are some amazing companies that are doing amazing things,” she says. “It’s not always about just sitting in front of a computer and coding.”

Ms Hendry may not have set out for a career in tech but she’s managed to break the mould.

Curriculum vitae

Title: Co-founder and managing director of ddroidd

Date of birth: September 1981

Lives: Leeds

Favourite holiday destination: Italy

Last book read: Start With Why by Simon Sinek

Favourite film: Almost Famous

Favourite song: MGMT – Time to Pretend

Car driven: Nissan Qashqai

Most proud of: My little boy, Louis