AI builder. Thirty years in corporate security taught me discipline. A redundancy and a basketball court taught me what came next.
This started with a shovel.
After 30 years in corporate security, I was made redundant. No plan. No clear direction. For the first time in decades, there was no structure. No system. No playbook. Just me.
But I knew one thing — I had to challenge myself. So I did something completely out of character. When my son casually suggested building a basketball court in the garden, I said yes.
Truth is, DIY is not my world. Not even close. But that wasn't the point. This wasn't really about a basketball court.
It became the hardest thing I've ever done. Physically. Mentally. Sleepless nights. Endless digging. Stone after stone. Root after root. And no matter how much I cleared, there was always more underneath.
At one point — exhausted, covered in dirt, hands trashed and not used to this — I stopped. Had a moment.
I realised I was tearing everything out. All these stones. And yet, eventually, I'd be putting stones back in. But this time, it wouldn't be random. It would be Sub-base Type 1. Compacted. Structured. Solid. Every piece working together for strength and stability.
That hit me hard. Because that's exactly what I was doing with my own life. Breaking everything down. So I could rebuild it properly.
That basketball court became a metaphor for everything. Resilience. Rebuilding. Bouncing back.
Within six months, I'd done the same with my work:
This site is what came out of all that.
For UK freelancers and small businesses chasing unpaid invoices.
£26 billion sits unpaid across UK businesses at any given time. Most never formally chase because legal help is too expensive, too slow, too intimidating. Clara generates a Letter Before Action in minutes, for £19.99. Solicitor-grade language without the solicitor cost.
An AI holiday matcher for independent travel agents.
Independent travel agents lose 24/7 enquiries to bigger online booking sites. Sortd sits on their website, qualifies every enquiry, recommends three best-fit holidays, and delivers a structured lead summary straight to the agent's inbox — while they sleep.
FCA-aligned customer support for small banks and building societies.
Smaller institutions want better customer experiences but can't afford to build them. Sybil is a support and triage layer aligned with FCA Consumer Duty — intelligent enough to help, disciplined enough to know its boundaries, and deployed without touching core banking systems.
A 24/7 branded support agent for growing online retailers.
Too big to manage support manually. Too small for enterprise software. Ria handles the everyday questions — orders, returns, sizing, faults — on brand and instantly. Every conversation logged. Weekly intelligence summary delivered. Built for the space in between.
Cold outreach, finally done right.
Prospex reads each prospect, researches their company, identifies pain points and writes a personalised cold email tailored to your offering. No templates, no generic copy. Built for sales teams, agencies and recruiters who need volume without sacrificing relevance.
An automated early-warning system for SaaS customer churn.
ChurnGuard watches for the quiet signals — failed payments, login drop-offs, usage decline — and writes a warm, personalised recovery email to each at-risk customer. Delivered through SendGrid, with Slack alerts to your team. Built for SaaS companies that can't afford to lose customers to bad timing.
Discord's first premium voice roast bot.
Snarkify doesn't just send roasts — it speaks them. Using high-quality voice packs, perfectly synced to on-screen text. From light banter to full-on savage mode. Built for Discord communities that want their bots to have personality, not just functions. My very first AI project.
The work I've shipped is built. The work I'm doing now is distribution.
Building has been the easier part. Seven products live, none yet with paying customers. The gap I'm working on closing is the one between building well and being found.
For the next stretch, my focus is on bringing Clara Disputes to its first paying customers — finding the right channel, the right voice, and the right rhythm of consistent execution. The other products continue to evolve in the background, but Clara is where the energy is right now.
Open to conversations about any of the products, collaborations on AI in regulated industries, or talking to other UK practitioners building outside the venture capital model.