At 22 I bought an 18,000 sq ft swimming baths with a 5% deposit on a credit card and a £500k guarantee from my lodger, a final-year law student whose family owned pubs. The Deep End opened in 1997. By 23 I was running a 600-capacity live venue in one of the roughest parts of Sheffield; by 30, juggling seven companies (I thought I was invincible; turns out I was just good at juggling, until I wasn’t), and burning out.

In 2018 I took over a near-bankrupt Airship, pivoted it from an agency to SaaS, launched Toggle, raised from Mercia and sprinted through the pandemic to two exits: Zonal in 2022, then Volaris in 2026.

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