Nathaniel Smithies

Hi! 👋 I'm Nathaniel, Nat for short.I'm Founder & CEO of ContentFuel.ai, an AI writing app that learns your unique writing style and gives you effortlessly personalized content.I was Founder & CEO of The Upstarters , one of world’s leading no-code app development agencies.I was Founder & CEO of PlusGuidance the online therapy platform that was acquired in April 2017.

Nathaniel Smithies

The PlusGuidance Story

Creating, launching, scaling, and selling PlusGuidance was a journey like no other.The most stressful and difficult times of my life, along with the most exciting and fulfilling.

From Vision to Acquisition

Launched in 2013, PlusGuidance was acquired by a larger digital health company in 2017 and merged into its service, without the brand name PlusGuidance being used. A non-disclosure agreement was signed, but the valuation was a fair deal for our shareholders.The road to exit was sometimes stressful, but mostly an exhilarating ride.

Humble Beginnings

It all started in a small flat in south London.I started PlusGuidance and persuaded 2 intelligent friends to join me.

1st Office in Brixton

Ideas. Chaos. Passion.PlusGuidance moved in and vowed to set the world on fire. Nobody knew what they were doing, but everyone knew what we wanted to achieve - improve access to mental health services.

Things Get Real

We had raised a 2nd round of investment, and things started to fall into place. User growth, revenue growth, and brand recognition in the therapy world.

Awards

Several competitions invited us to join including Dragon's Den (which I declined, -> bad valuations, already funded), and many we won or were amongst the finalists. These pictures were taken on top of the BT Tower in London as part of the BT SME Ingenious awards.

Web Summit

PlusGuidance was invited as an 'alpha startup' to exhibit at Web Summit, the biggest startup conference in the world.

Great People

Growing a company is hard, and you have to go through different stages very quickly. If you have brilliant and loyal people working with you, you must keep them.

Parent Company Offices

As we were going through the acquisition we moved into the parent company offices on the river thames in central London. Quite a difference to what we had been used to previously.

On to the next challenge

After the company sale, some celebrations and well-earned rest were in order. I then started to live in different countries and saw remote work as the future. I went on to found the no-code app development agency 'The Upstarters'.But years later, I'm now back on that crazy startup path growing ContentFuel.ai and embracing AI as the future!