Here's a quick summary of me (more visual? this is for you...)
- Born and bred in Brighton, England (Portslade actually, but I don’t like to admit it)
- Taught myself to code at around age 10
- Got into building PCs
- Blew up a TV by rewiring it into an old stereo for a homemade ‘surround sound experience’
- My parents became born again Christian's. So I went to a ‘happy-clappy’ church for years until the age of about 15 when I decided that I needed to make my own mind up. I’m still making my mind up...but haven’t been to the happy-clappy church since (although I have a lot of respect for many parts of it and religion in general)
- Fast forward a decade or so:
- 1st class degree at Sussex Uni in Computer Science and Management
- Travelled the world (literally, I brought one of those round the world tickets using the money from my student loan that I'd saved from living at home)
- Worked for a few small software companies to learn how it all works
- Age 22, I spent a couple of months in New York (I was living in a swanky hotel, and working at Bank of America’s New York HQ, working closely with traders - they were fascinating)
- Age 24, I left the safety of ‘full-time employment’ to become self-employed
- Started a few different companies (some more successful than others)
- True story, co-founded a business with UK comedian and TV personality, Graham Norton (amongst other people). Called NooStar. Think: “YouTube mixed with Britains got talent”
- We raise £1M, and built a great brand, tech and community
- Loads of fun, learnt loads -> Pretty big flop (we ended up competing with YouTube when they were launching in the UK...that was a bad idea)
- We were way too early, which taught me an important lesson about market timing
- Built and scaled the creative digital agency Bite Studio
- Highlights: won awards, amazing team, millions of people around the world using websites, e-commerce platforms and interactive installations that we’d made
- Lowlights: almost getting sued by the erotic novel publisher Mills & Boon
- Quarter life crisis where I begun asking myself ‘is this it’ and then went deep on why we do what we do
- Accidentally spun out video wall rental company Super Massive Big Screens
- On the whole a nightmare - but loads of fun
- Helped launch behaviour change platform Do Something Different
- Completely changed the way I look at the world
- I begun to connect the dots backwards around my interest in behavioural science, psychology and marketing. Basically in people and why people do what they do (or don’t)
- The importance of behaviour change and the role that habits play in our lives became a key pillar to my work and interests
- Sold the agency to a fledgling startup, StoryStream
- Mission: to make marketing more authentic. Helping brands include content from customers and fans into their marketing at scale
- Raised over $5M
- When I stepped back it was doing 7 figures in ARR (annual recurring revenue), offices in London and Brighton, amazing global brands and their customers all over the world using the product.