A great British hope goes global Face time: founders Alastair Mitchell, left, and Andy McLoughlin see each other rarely since they set up a San Francisco office, where Mr McLoughlin spends most of his time If you do not like being reminded how youthful successful technology start-ups can be, do not visit Huddle's London offices. The person who ans­wers the door looks bare­ly out of college and the average age of the 200 staff is 32. At 35, Alastair Mitchell, Huddle's co-founder and chief executive, is a relative old-timer. His first two ventures were modestly successful software companies. But Huddle is different because it got into cloud computing, in which documents, music and other data are stored and ac­cessed via the web, just as the sector took off. Huddle's collaborative software, ex­plains Mr Mitchell, allows users to share documents online and across multiple devices securely, making it suitable for use by, say, government departments or any organisation where security is at a premium. A shout suddenly echoes across Huddle's open-plan office space. "That's just one of our team recording another sale," Mr Mitchell says. In little more than five years, Huddle has grown from an idea developed by Mr Mitchell and co-founder Andy McLoughlin to a business with global ambitions. It has also become a motif for the tech cluster known as Silicon Roundabout that is blossoming in Shoreditch on the edge of the City. When people debate which company could be the next UK-based technology company to follow up on the success of Autonomy, bought by Hewlett-Packard for $11bn in 2011, Huddle is often among the names mentioned. The founders seem up for the challenge. In the boardroom, Mr McLoughlin joins in the conversation by telephone from San Francisco to cite Lastminute.com and Lovefilm: "These were great companies with terrific technology but would we like to go one better? Advice for start-ups with overseas ambitions Huddle co-founder Andy McLoughlin discusses going global: On winning US business if you are "made in the UK": "Looking and acting like an international company from the early days is important - one of the reasons we chose the name Huddle was because we knew it would appeal to a US audience. People are still sometimes surprised when they learn Huddle was born in London. Trading via the internet meant that we could win business without having to speak to anyone on the phone - my American accent is still terrible. As time went on we realised we had a client list that most US companies would be proud of. Nothing beats logos, quotes and case studies from household names. On opening doors in another country: "The right partnership executed well can really accelerate your business and help lift you above the noise. Also, at the end of 2008 we were one of just five application partners that launched on LinkedIn's app platform - this gave us a huge amount of exposure. It was at this point that people really sat up and took notice of what we were doing. On keeping in touch when based far apart: "Communication is paramount and you have to work doubly hard to keep everyone up to date - the information that is so easily disseminated when you're 20 people in a room suddenly doesn't spread quite so easily across 6,000 miles. We're lucky enough to have unlimited access to a rather special collaboration platform, so we use Huddle intensively to create, share and collaborate on content. Huddle is now used by more than 100,000 companies and government bodies in 180 countries. Employees in organisations as diverse as Disney and Nato log on to its systems to share documents securely no matter what electronic gizmos they are using or where they may be. The company has grown rapidly through users inviting colleagues either in the same workplace or from other organisations they work with to collaborate on Huddle. Anyone can join for free, but companies are charged a fee. A big break came a couple of years ago when British civil servants in Whitehall began using Huddle to work on policy documents that need­ed input from various departments. Soon 80 per cent of central government was on Huddle, the founders say. Sales last year were just shy of £10m. It seems a long way from when the co-founders met as tenants of a friend of Mr Mitchell. "Alastair had moved out of the room I'd be living in just weeks before," Mr McLoughlin says. A group of us would play badminton each week . . . and we got to know each other over post-racquet sport drinks. Huddle was started with £25,000 of savings and with seed funding from venture capital firms. It has now raised $40m in equity funding. Getting them both in the same room now is rare because in 2010 Mr Mc­Loughlin moved to San Francisco to set up Huddle's first US office. When I first came out here we were definitely a UK-based, UK-headquartered company but the US percentage-wise has grown more than the UK. Now Huddle is preparing to open an office in Washington to support a breakthrough into the heart of the US government. Last month it announced its technology was being developed for the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency in Washington. The move is the result of a partnership and technology development agreement with In-Q-Tel, a non-profit, strategic investment firm that identifies new technology to support US intelligence. Mr McLoughlin and Mr Mitchell say their UK government success won them credibility in Washington. Huddle's national identity is an issue they must navigate carefully: they want to benefit from their status among London's tech start-ups; but they also need to reassure security officials in Washington and to stay in touch with experienced investors in San Francisco. For a moment, the two fall silent. Then the squawkbox crackles: "If you cut us open, we're British all through the middle," Mr McLoughlin says. But, given the type of businesses who may eventually acquire us or, given the type of customers we want to be working with, and given the money that we aim to raise . . . that has always meant we have to have a strong US-based operation out here on the west coast. At the same time, Mr Mitchell says software developers are now easier to find and cheaper to hire in London than in San Francisco. We get some of the best guys out of the banks. One criticism levelled at UK-based start-ups is that founders sell too early, often to big US businesses. They are blamed - by British onlookers at least - for lacking the self-belief to grow big on their own. Mr Mitchell disagrees: "We are part of this group of guys that came out in 2006 and 2007, including Mimecast, Mind Candy and Wonga, and I think we look at the world differently. All of us are trying to build big businesses and don't have ambitions to sell early. Huddle would be missed by its London cluster if its base moved overseas. For instance, Mr McLoughlin and Mr Mitchell early on set up a networking event, DrinkTank, for founders and the software dev­elopers, lawyers and investors they need to make their ideas a reality. But Huddle already faces having to leave its Shoreditch base because of lack of a big enough space for the business. This should be a worry for those championing the area as a nurturing home to growing tech start-ups who may have the same challenge. Have they talked to the Shard, London's newest, tallest tower? "Yes," says Mr Mitchell. We talked to them about having a space right at the top. I wanted a throne right at the top of it, a revolving throne. It is a joke but the high ambitions are evidently serious.