Steve Grainger founded Enigma Interactive 25 years ago and it has since grown into a specialist digital development agency with offices in Newcastle and London, and a 40-plus team of highly-skilled producers, designers, developers and digital strategists.
What was your first job (and what did it pay)? Other than a couple of stints stacking shelves at a supermarket, my first job in tech was for a part-time role for a research department at Newcastle University. I was studying computer science and they needed a programmer who could help them write the software for some brand new technology they were investigating called ‘interactive video’. This was way before computers had entered the mainstream and well before anyone was even aware of a thing called “the internet”, and it really marked the very beginning of the kind of digital experience we now take for granted on our phones and computers. It was a fabulous opportunity and gave me my first taste of the potential that well designed technology can have to change our lives.
What is the best advice or support you’ve been given in business? Have a vision and have the confidence that you can achieve it. It’s a lot easier to find reasons why something can’t be done than it is to find the way it can. But if you believe in something, and really want it to work, then more often than not you can find a way.
