A group start leads to faster growth, according to Phil Gerrard, co-founder of design agency AllofUs

When five designers decided to start their own agency, AllofUs, in 2000, they didn't view it as leaving a secure, low-risk corporate world. Rather they felt they would be pioneers in the interactive design sector, controlling their own destinies.

Co-founder Phil Gerrard says: "It was the time of the dotcom collapse. We wanted to look beyond the doom and gloom and create something that we felt was where technology and design were going."

AllofUs, a £2.3m turnover business, creates applications for all sorts of technical platforms, from product and interior design to exhibition spaces and interfaces for products such as the iPhone. It continues its original "bread and butter" work in the form of website design and online marketing. Gerrard says: "We're like magpies that sit in the middle and borrow the best bits of all these design disciplines and then plug that into what we do. The thing that transforms it is the technology. We have a dedicated R&D unit so we spot innovations; then we incubate, prototype and evaluate them."

Gerrard reckons the group dynamic has helped AllofUs "grow aggressively" from the outset. "We've got five directors. We've modelled the structure on our respective skills. In that respect, it's a scalable proposition. There's no doubling up. If you've got the right team, you just need the balls to get up and do it."