Awards win is pure Liquid gold for Matt

May 12 2009 by Henryk Zientek, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

A BUSINESSMAN has overcome a disrupted education and dyslexia to head an award-winning company.

Matt Holmes was presented with the trophy after his company Liquid Accounts was named Best Emerging Business at the 42Under42 Awards held in Leeds.

Matt, who is managing director of the Longwood-based firm, received the award from Jules D’Or, director of enterprise services at Business Link Yorkshire.

The award came in recognition of Liquid Accounts’ “fresh approach and good commercial proposition”. Judges commented that “Liquid stood out for the strides it has made in such a challenging market”.

Liquid Accounts is one of the pioneers of online accounting software in the UK.

Among its other accolades, it has been voted Best Web-Hosted Accounting Software by its customers at the Software Satisfaction Awards.

It received the highest customer satisfaction rating in the whole competition of 19 software categories – beating big names like Sage and Iris.

Mr Holmes was shortlisted for having overcome a number of barriers to become one of the leading developers of online applications in the country – and a pioneer of online accounting software.

Despite being highly intelligent he was kicked out of school, aged seven and his parents were told that he was “backward” and needed to go to a special school.