The Journey
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.
/ 01
From Vision to Acquisition
Launched in 2013, acquired by a larger digital health company in 2017 and merged into its service. An NDA was signed, but the valuation was a fair deal for our shareholders. The road to exit was sometimes stressful — mostly, it was an exhilarating ride.
/ 02
Humble Beginnings
It all started in a small flat in south London. I started PlusGuidance and persuaded two intelligent friends to join me.
/ 03
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.
/ 04
Things Get Real
We had raised a second round of investment, and things started to fall into place. User growth, revenue growth, and brand recognition in the therapy world.
/ 05
Awards
We were invited to pitch everywhere — including Dragon’s Den, which I declined (bad valuations, already funded). Others we won or reached the finals, like the BT SME Ingenious awards, photographed from the top of the BT Tower in London.
/ 06
Web Summit
PlusGuidance was invited as an ‘alpha startup’ to exhibit at Web Summit — the biggest startup conference in the world.
/ 07
Great People
Growing a company is hard, and you have to move through different stages very quickly. If you have brilliant and loyal people working with you, you must keep them.
/ 08
Parent Company Offices
As we went through the acquisition, we moved into the parent company offices on the River Thames in central London. Quite a difference from what we had been used to.
/ 09
On to the Next Challenge
After the sale, some celebrations and well-earned rest were in order. I lived in different countries and saw remote work as the future — going on to found The Upstarters. Years later, I’m back on that crazy startup path, growing ContentFuel.ai and embracing AI as the future!