I graduated from Nottingham University with a degree in Spanish and Portuguese. Languages are a passion of mine.
After University, I went onto the marketing graduate scheme at L’Oreal. After trying out marketing, sales and logistics, I settled in the brand team for Kerastase. After 2 years, I was given the responsibility to launch the new Shu Uemura Art of Haircare brand in the UK and the following year, a new professional skincare brand, Keraskin.
In 2010, my best friend and I decided to embark on the DesignMyNight journey. We both kept our jobs while working on it for a year; deciding to go full time in December 2010.
In 2012 we got £250K funding from a group of angel investors and pivoted from a purely consumer website, to a B2B software company too. We launched a reservations platform (Collins), a ticketing platform (Tonic) and an e-vouchering platform (Soda). In 2013 we got another £250K from the same group of investors. This helped propel us into one of the leading B2C and B2B platforms in the UK hospitality industry; disrupting the huge, global incumbents in this space.
In November 2017, we were acquired by The Access Group for over £25m, with over 8 million views a month on our consumer platform and over 5000 B2B clients.
I am now an active angel investor, mentor and startup studio founder. Find me on Linkedin.