Founded in 2000 by four graduates still in their twenties, the company started out with the idea of selling a new piece of technology capable of dramatically shortening development time for software applications.

But, as Brett Husbands, chief executive, says: 'The world changed.'

As an economics graduate he was not slow to realise that 'dot-bomb misery' would put the mokkers on any hope of attracting VC funding to a venture tinged by technology.

'We had to think on our feet and change direction, because when we started the world was a different place.

'If I was looking at the idea again today it probably wouldn't be worth doing; and if we'd had VCs involved I think it would have been impossible to change tack. We would have been held to a business plan, forced to go on and go bust, lose all their money and ours.'

What BWS did instead was to use the technology itself to offer a service to local authorities.

Mr Husbands had a head start. He used to be IT strategy coordinator with a local authority and had spotted an opportunity.

'The Government has given ridiculous, sorry, ambitious targets for local authorities to meet service improvements by 2005,' he says.

Over the past 18 months BWS has signed contracts with authorities across the country and business is booming.

Locally, Uttlesford District Council is a customer.

'e-government is something I can get really excited about,' Mr Husbands says.

What it is all about is - horrid phrase - 'joined-up' local government. Citizens getting answers to questions sooner rather than later, at worst not at all, council departments communicating effectively with one another, getting the whole thing moving more smoothly and efficiently.

'We are able to respond quickly because we have the underlying technology to build applications quickly - weeks instead of months. We can react faster than the customers' buying cycle.'

Mr Husbands' fellow directors are his younger brother, Grant, and Giles Mitton, both Cambridge graduates in computing, and Russ Casey, who studied computing at Imperial College.

Initial funding for the venture came not least from re-mortgaging homes in London ('we did it using our own floorboards and borrowed excessively'), so failure would have been about more than losing a job.

As things have turned out, the company has been profitable almost from the start. Turnover for the first 17 months was 210,000 and could go as high as 1.8 million this year.

The company's products, which tend to begin with 'Achieve' - 'AchieveForms', 'AchieveOffice', 'AchieveInformation' - sell at around 20,000 a time, but BWS is now dealing in multiples as local authorities form networks. A current job involves 11 authorities and is moving BWS into the big money.

The original technology is known as FirmStep, and Mr Husbands reluctantly admits it is what many would call a 'killer application'. He does not like this kind of lingo: 'We don't hobby horse on buzz words. What we are doing is about meeting people's needs.'

FirmStep may yet make it into the marketplace as a tool for others to use, but Mr Husbands is in no hurry: 'I am not sure the market is ready. I am not sure people want to solve their own problems. FirmStep gives them the ability to make their own medicine.'

Meanwhile, the next step is to push the Achieve products in other sectors in which customer service and internal collaboration are key and, as Mr Husbands says: 'There is not an organisation in the world that doesn't want more of that.'

BWS will use established reseller channels in other sectors to achieve this. It will also create a new company to sell FirmStep, when the time comes, so as not to muddy the waters.

Mr Husbands says he and his fellow directors chose Cambridge as the location for their business not only because two of them had been students here, but because it seemed the right place to be.

They have had help and advice from city godfathers such as Walter Herriot and John Snyder.

YTKO has carried out DTI-funded market research on their behalf, they have attended Cambridge Entrepreneurship Centre events and Cambridge Network gatherings, and they are already working with other Cambridge firms, such as Autonomy.

The company is based at St John's Innovation Centre and has a dozen people. It is still recruiting.

Brett Husbands says he is working a 90- to 100-hour week right now, but obviously does not mind. He used to like skydiving in his spare time, but that's gone out of the window.

Which is more scary? Jumping out of aeroplanes or heading a fast-growth high tech company?

'Doing either is exciting, but you have to be sure you are going to achieve what you are setting out to do.'

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