Our story

In 2012 husband and wife team Ric and Emily Hill escaped the big city of London and created what is now Ghyston - here is their story.

Ric Hill
Ric Hill Founder and CTO

In 2012 husband and wife team Ric Hill (Managing Director) and Emily Hill (Director of People and Culture), together with three colleagues, sought to escape the big city of London and opened what has now become Ghyston in Colston Tower, Bristol. At the time it was a second office for Softwire, a software development company based in North London, where Ric and Emily had spent over 12 years between them.

Since 2012 the office grew steadily and at the end of 2014 reached its next landmark: separating from the parent company as a separate commercial entity, Softwire West Limited. In those two and a half years, we had grown from five to twenty-five employees and established a network of loyal clients in the local area. We were also steadily evolving our own identity, still true to our roots from Softwire but with our own specialisms based on the needs of our local clients. Dan Phipps (Operations Director) joined us in 2014 as a senior project manager, bringing with him over a decade of experience in the industry.

In September 2017, now standing at thirty-five employees, we made the final transition away from Softwire and began trading as Ghyston. This gave us the opportunity to create a new brand that really represents our own purpose and values, and also gave us the freedom to mould our services for the benefit of our clients.

We now stand in a unique position: backed by decades of experience and maturity, but with the youthfulness, enthusiasm and flexibility of a modern, customer-centric operation.

That’s the story of our company, but there’s another Ghyston story too!  Click here to read about that one.

Ric Hill
Ric Hill
Founder and CTO

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