Recipe: To open a start-up called Digital 51

Ingredients: 5 passionate people, 1 hub, 3 core values

Method: Cook for six months.

In every recipe there’s a secret to be found. Sometimes baking a cake isn’t as easy as it sounds, right? Mary Berry didn’t get to where she is by only following a basic recipe. There’s always some secret ingredients, we are no different at Digital 51. We need our own secret ingredients, we just thought it would be more fun to share these with you. Very early on we decided to always live by these five values: communication, passion, creativity, honesty, humour.

So, the method to our secrets?

Communication:

Add a dollop of daily communication in the form of our huddle at the hub or via TEAMS at 9am. Mix our ideas together and leave to simmer adding Teams, WhatsApp and an email every so often. See communication, in our opinion, is the most important thing to keep a workplace going. It’s key to its functionality. Sometimes waking up to an overcooked inbox isn’t always favourable, famed for an over-cooked inbox is our Founder Simon Brown. Simon, that inbox is not practical! Communication is what keeps us, the start-up, from overbaking. No-one likes burnt cake surely?

Passion:

One of the key ingredients to add from the very start. It’s easy to think passion is what keeps us doing our jobs properly. However it’s easier said than done and not everyone shares or shows it in the same way. No passion, no point as the saying goes, however remember sometimes you need a little more or less of any ingredient, regardless of what the recipe book says. A good baker knows juts the right amount.

Honesty

An ingredient that can ruin the recipe if not used properly, it can actually make your cake explode if used incorrectly! ‘Honesty is the best policy,’ cliché? We don’t think cliché, but we also don’t think you should be free-pouring the honesty. Think of it like this, if you add too little there will be no flavour, if you add too much you may over-power and ruin the entire taste of the cake. Honesty is a key ingredient that is always used here at Digital 51, but it took us some time to get it right.

Humour:

Mix in sprinkles of laughter at all times, humour is the magic ingredient for us. A start-up without humour is like a cake without a raising agent, flat, depressed in the middle and just a little sad looking. Whether it be laughing at a certain person’s ping pong skills, music taste, or absolutely horrific geographical knowledge (Adrienne Howlett, we might be shaming you here,) humour is an important mix in the Digital 51 recipe.

Creativity:

A decorating piece to create a showstopper. Something to catch everyone’s eye. Something to make us be desired. Creativity is what makes a great start-up. Creativity is what makes a start-up stand out. We believe creativity blends hand in hand with passion; to be passionate about something but to make it your own will be a perfect recipe.

Like any recipe everyone will have a variation, different ingredients, different weights, or even different mixing techniques. What’s important is you know what your ingredients are, which ones are important to you and you taste the mixtures on a regular basis to check it’s still right.

For us, we have been honing the recipe over the past seven months, we are ready to enter the Bake Off and being honest we absolutely ready for a Hollywood handshake!

This is our recipe for success, what’s yours?

This article was written by Chloe Brown Marketing Intern for Digital 51 and Lauren Parsons Talent Partner at Digital 51. both clearly love baking, but both equally love Digital 51. We’d love to hear what your secret ingredients are, why don’t you reach out and tell us at