The starting point

Now more than 30 people strong, and with business growing right around the world, our research expanded into the audit sector. Recognising that few of our analysts were likely to have grown up with a burning desire to write about auditing, we made sure that we served cake every time we mentioned the word, and duped perfectly intelligent people into fighting among each other for the chance to write our next report.

Our first home

Having lead an itinerant life for a couple of years, in 2009 we finally settled down in a little office at the top end of Bishopsgate in London. It wasn’t much, and the few charms it had were offset by the fact that late-night revellers liked to use our back door as an impromptu toilet, but it backed on to the magnificent old Spitalfields market, put us a stone’s throw from many of the consulting firms we had started working with, and was a place to call home.

2009

Handbags

Jodi had been working for us for a few years when she announced that her husband, Matt, had been offered an exciting new job in Dubai, and that they’d be moving out there in 2010. The timing was good – growth starved European and American consultants were making a bee-line for the hot markets of the Middle East – and so we decided to set up an office there. Or at least a desk. That ushered in a period of regular trips to the Middle East, and a serious uptick in the quality of handbags knocking around the Source office.

2010

The long walk along the Bosporus

In early 2014, Joe and his wife spent a long weekend in Istanbul and came back raving about it. On the spur of the moment we announced that we’d take the whole team there if we hit our sales target by the end of June. We hit it by the end of May, and so began the Source tradition now known as 'Source Miles', which allows anyone who’s been with the company for more than five years to pick a destination and put it to the vote.

2014

Modeling

Not that sort! 2014 was also the year we first created our Global Consulting Data Model, a model that we now believe to be the biggest and most sophisticated of its kind in existence but which, back then, was most notable for making Excel go “ouch, stop it!” a lot. Before falling on the floor and crying. By this point, we’d moved down the road to King William St and were single-handedly keeping our nearest South-East Asian soup joint (Nusa) in business.

2014

For queen and country

St Dunstan’s Hill (we like moving) and our team had grown to about 25 people. This made it all the more difficult to work out who should go to Buckingham Palace to accept our Queen’s Award for Enterprise in International Trade, which was conferred in recognition of the rapid growth in our export business over the previous few years. Thankfully, nobody sent the Queen the picture of Charis doing business in New York, atop an inflatable swan in a rooftop pool, as part of our application, otherwise things might have ended differently.

Joining the 4% club

2017 was the year when we moved again (gotta love moving), to the unfortunately-named Little Britain, and became one of only 4% of businesses that get as far as celebrating their 10th birthday. Now more than 30 people strong, and with business growing right around the world, our research expanded into the audit sector. Recognising that few of our analysts were likely to have grown up with a burning desire to write about auditing, we made sure that we served cake every time we mentioned the word, and duped perfectly intelligent people into fighting among each other for the chance to write our next report.

2017