How I Stumbled Upon My Startup Idea
As a young Yorkshireman, I achieved my dream of turning an idea into a product with over 30,000 app users in 27 countries, working with some of the biggest brands and professional sportsmen in the industry. As a profitable business, I failed. But as the person I became, I succeed.
This is the realistic startup story of what 90% of founders go through but isn’t told. Dedicated and sacrificing years of your life to an idea only to end up back in the ‘traditional’ employment world.
Along the way, I faced the challenges of starting a business in an industry I knew nothing about but loved. Fulfilling every young amateur athlete's dream of signing professional sportsmen. Making deals with globally recognised brands with no money. Developing and battling health anxiety. Losing relationships. Money problems. Having to move back home. Finding love and finally pitching on BBC’s investment TV show Dragon’s Den.
All to the conclusion of ceasing trade.
It has a happy ending but not in the form of millions of pounds and a successful business, but in the lessons, you learn about yourself, friends, family, and what really matters in this life.
Part One: The Beginnings
“I’ve got an idea.”
How many times do you hear that? Believing they have the next Facebook, Airbnb, or Uber.
It’s true many people do have ideas. Some are dreadful, some are great and some are too nervous to share it in case you might steal it.
The truth is, literally anyone can have the idea for the next big thing in their head but where the majority of people fall down is they don’t act upon that idea and prefer walking around telling people they have an idea rather than doing something about it as that’s the easy option.
I have always loved sport, with football being my main passion and it forms some of my earliest and happiest memories. Whether that was going to watch Leeds United with my dad and brother or spending hours playing in the garden with friends only to take a break to drink glass after glass of orange squash to keep us going.
But as I grew older into my teens the injuries in football became all too frequent, costing me time at school and time away from being active and competitive, so I turned my focus to playing more golf. My dad always encouraged me to play golf when I was growing up as he told me it would be useful in business (which it did on many levels) and whilst I dabbled in it when I was younger, football always took priority.
Post injuries, as I started to play golf more seriously and frequently, I fell in love with it. The strategic element, the constant room for improvement, and the competitiveness of being stood on your own in silence with only your own thoughts, knowing it was down to what you produced at that moment was the difference between winning and losing was a feeling I couldn’t get enough of. I loved pressure situations and trying to rise out of them victoriously through the strength of mind and skill.
As I started to get better, to me golf was like no other sport I had played. In football, your actions are mainly instinct and muscle memory built on years of perfecting your skill as you very rarely have time apart from set-pieces or penalties to process anything before deciding on your action.
Whereas in golf, you have all the time in the world to think about every detail of your swing, how the ball is sitting, the wind speed and direction, the situation, the tiredness of your muscles, a song you heard on the radio, literally anything can go through your mind before you take action.
I still remember one moment that I think will always stay with me and has become an internal metaphor for many situations in my life.
When I was about 16, I was playing in one of my first junior medals at Oakdale Golf Club in Harrogate, North Yorkshire and I was having a great round.
At the time I was playing off a relatively high handicap as I had just started, maybe around 30, and coming down the last hole I knew I was leading the junior medal as I was in the last group out so I knew what had already been posted.
On the 18th hole, I had hit my tee shot straight down the middle of the fairway. The approach to the green was a real nervy shot as it had a beck of water running in front of it so you couldn’t afford to be short or you’d be in the water and you’d be facing a high scoring number. You also couldn’t go long, as there was a severe bank immediately behind the green and if you land on that you risked on your next shot either firing the ball back over the other side and into the water or simply duffing it one foot and looking pretty stupid. To top it off, this bank was the gallery where everyone had gathered to watch the final group come in.
I remember so vividly being stood on the fairway and seeing what seemed like hundreds but more like twentyish young golfers watching down on me to see if I would choke and dunk it in the water or if I was a golfer to be acknowledged in the club. Also having the surname of Hacker in golf was less than ideal as a Hacker is a derogatory term in golf that means: someone who rarely plays golf so is quite bad when they do.
I knew if I could get it over the water and anywhere on the green, then I would win the medal. I had about 150 yards in which at that age was about my 6 iron and was a yardage I always liked. I could hear the chatter from the bank and the eyes bearing down on me but I took myself into a moment of silence and visualised what their reaction would be on the bank when I hit the green and how I would feel seeing my ball safely on the dance floor and stepping up to the moment.
As soon as I hit it, I knew I had nailed it. If you have ever played golf you know that rare time as an amateur when you hit the middle of the club and you can’t even feel the ball make contact with the club. It’s the greatest feeling in golf and has been linked to the same feeling you get when gambling. As the ball settled in the middle of the green, just to the right of the flag about 15 feet away I didn’t even register the crowd’s reaction, I just had a quiet word proving to myself I can step up in these situations. I thrived. I didn’t choke.
I then had the bug. I used to spend days down at the Golf Club playing 36, 72 holes a day in the summer and playing with some great friends and really good golfers that always pushed me to be better. We only used to play for a pint of Coca-Cola which isn’t much, but buying that drink for someone was something I loathed to do and would do all I could to make sure I didn’t.
However, after going to university and then moving to London in 2009 golf fell away. Without a car, the time, the money for a Membership or friends to play with, it became one of those things I did before ‘real-life’ and a career took over.
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In 2010, I started at McCann Erickson London advertising agency as a Graduate Account Executive. I spent three years at McCann learning the foundations of advertising, the importance of storytelling in marketing, how to build great relationships, and formed friendships that would become some of the richest I have today.
In 2013 I moved to London’s top creative agency AMV BBDO and worked my way up to Global Account Director on Mars Petcare and The Metropolitan Police Service accounts.
We began creative development for a new global campaign for Cesar (the dog food) which was becoming the flagship of creativity within Mars and the agency.
I was keen to impress the team, the planners, the creatives, production, and senior management in the agency showing that I was the best account man for the job.
I have always held extremely high standards for myself and having a solid work ethic. I have never needed motivation or encouragement. I am my own harshest critic and expect more from myself than most people probably do but I genuinely believe if you only measure yourself against your best self then you won’t go far wrong.
When working in advertising I had my sights on becoming the CEO of a top London agency or owning my own agency. To me, that was the bar as any lower and I couldn't believe I had fulfilled my potential. This competitiveness continued from football and golf and even extended to making sure I was the first cyclist off at the red lights when cycling to work.
I couldn’t help it. Competition drives me.
I was very fortunate that when I joined AMV, my boss, was someone I quickly grew to really respect and admire and knew I could learn a lot from. He was an energetic character that genuinely seemed to thrive off clients' problems and finding creative solutions to solve them.
We worked closely together on the campaign which involved many heated debates with creatives, difficult conversations with clients, and a fair amount of drinking in the pub.
He taught me the importance of good, honest relationships with everyone he worked with so that he could have difficult conversations or push people’s boundaries without offending anyone because they trusted him. This was an approach to business that was going to set me up for my own venture.
I never had that Eureka moment that some people talk about when an idea comes to them in a split second. I do remember though in November 2013 after working with some brilliant minds in the agency about motivating behavior to work with other partners such as Google about the role technology plays in people’s lives, something in my head made me go back to that feeling I used to get when I played golf.
The sense of motivation, competitiveness, and achievement in sport was something I really missed, but living in London and no longer being a member of a golf club or having friends who were good at golf closeby to play with made me wonder how I could get that feeling back.
I stewed on this for a couple of weeks and knew I needed to get this feeling back in my life as it was a great escape from the pressures and intensity of work. I looked at golf Memberships close by to me, how could I get there on the tube? Who could I play with? But nothing grabbed me.
The main two barriers I was facing were firstly the prohibitively expensive golf Memberships which I would need to buy if I wanted to play in club competitions and secondly the quality of golfers I had around me to play with. I had friends to play with but not enough close by who would push me so it wasn’t a challenge for me to win and any athlete will tell you it’s not just about winning, it’s the manner in which you do so.
With all of these barriers firmly up and preventing me from getting that feeling back, combined with the influences I had been exposed to at the agency I thought to myself:
“Why do I need to be a Member of a golf club to get that competitive feeling? Surely in today’s world, I can play against people without being on the same physical golf course?”
And that was it. They were the two questions that set me on a path that would shape the next four years of my life.
