Building things since 2005, four of them acquired, and 72 agents running while I sleep. Some of it went beautifully. A fair amount of it did not, and that part is on this page too.Base44 Ambassador · Stamford, Lincolnshire
The short version
I am not an AI consultant who found the subject last year. I have been in business 20+ years. Four of the companies I built were acquired. Along the way I have worked with 1,000+ organisations.
Most days I am running several ventures at once. Steve runs them with me, and that is how it has worked for a long time now.
These four are the estate, and every one of them is still running.
That is the whole biography, and it is shorter than people expect. No origin story, no mentor list, no reading list. Everything I know about AI came out of running those businesses badly before I ran them well.
How I got here
Collapsed lungs, a record label, a lunch delivery app that was too early, two ventures that failed in the same year. Filter it if you only want the wins, but the wins make more sense with the rest of it attached.
Age 15: survived multiple collapsed lungs and major kidney surgeries.
Built a group of over 20 Browser Based Online Games (Age 15-17).
Went to Bible school, met Mozez (ex-Zero 7 singer), got kicked out.
Helped build Campfire with Pete Lawrence (Founder of Big Chill).
Built online lunch ordering delivery before Just Eat & Deliveroo.
Built a social platform that hit 10k users in 3 months.
Created a referral tool that gyms used to boost retention.
Sold my first company. Finally understood 'liquidity event'.
Helped international companies build online brands.
Gave back by mentoring students in local colleges and schools.
Domain name addiction: over 850 domain names owned—and counting.
Built and scaled 15+ ventures total.
Two ventures failed. One succeeded. The rollercoaster was real.
Major health scare. Life got real. Fast.
Found my lane: sports + fans + fundraising.
Founded Play Fund Win. All chips on the table.
Real clients. Real revenue. Real validation.
Building the team. Refining the model. Eyes on the prize.
One venture became a portfolio.
Took the pattern into hardware.
A few moments
Not one of these was taken at a desk, which is probably the most honest thing on this page.
Same table, same three people, a laptop each somewhere under the chairs. This is what "many ventures at once" actually looks like.
Okanagan, and I am the one at the front who cannot hold a camera straight. Sport is how I have met most of the people I work with.
Pen and paper first, every time. The agents do not get switched on until I already know what I am asking them for.
Sports tech, in the room
I founded Play Fund Win to bring fundraising technology to sport. These are three of the rooms it has taken me into, and the conversations I have brought back to clubs from them.
January 2026 · Madrid
Two days of discussions with Spanish football’s institutions on fan engagement, fundraising and sports-tech innovation.
LaLiga’s headquarters, with the French-Spanish Chamber of Commerce, then Real Madrid, then a presentation at Atlético de Madrid.
Outside the Metropolitano
Atlético de Madrid
LaLiga | Cámara de Comercio Franco-Española
At Atletico Madrid
At La Liga
Chamber of Commerce
Real Madrid
December 2025 · ISPO Munich
On the panel “Borders Down, Innovation Up: Inside the Global Sports Tech Movement”, sharing how fundraising technology is helping sport grow, and building partnerships across the sports-tech community.
Borders down, innovation up
Fan centric monetisation
On the step and repeat
November 2024 · Lisbon
Exhibiting on the Alpha stage, stand A508, at one of the world’s largest technology conferences, and opening conversations with teams and innovators across sport and fan engagement.
On our stand, Alpha A508
Web Summit
Presenting stadium matchday fan engagement at Arsenal and at Manchester City, the launch of stadium matchday 50/50 at Wrexham, and hospitality and networking with partners at Leeds.
Manchester City
In the stands at the Etihad
Arsenal
Wrexham
Wrexham
Leeds: hospitality and networking with partners
Work is only part of the story. Here's what makes me tick outside the boardroom.
Over 93 million views on Google reviews. If your café serves killer pastries, I'm probably rating them.
My cookies could give Millie's a run for their money. Stick around and you might just get a taste.
Fancy a cocktail or a crisp glass of white? Or a morning coffee – I'm in. Cheers!
By 9pm I'm lights out – got to rest this brilliant-but-busy brain.
I live in ridiculously colourful OddBalls gear. It sparks chats and new friendships – who says workout kits have to be grey and boring?
Keep messages short and sweet. Voice notes under 2 minutes welcome. Long essays? My brain nopes out.
Favourites include Greenlights, Atomic Habits, Zero Limits, Can't Hurt Me, The Alchemist, The Surrender Experiment, Big Magic, Inner Engineering, Screw It, Let's Do It.
"P.S → Photo is not of me at a wedding, it's the day I outdressed a potential investor (I voted to stand out/be remembered)"
These aren't just values on a wall. They're the filter for every decision.
Every venture starts with one question: will users genuinely love this? Fan joy comes first. Commercial outcomes follow when you nail the experience.
The record
There are no client results below, because I do not publish any and will not quote what I cannot show you. Every figure is something I did myself, most of it while running several ventures at once. None of it is rounded up.
20+
years building and running businesses
4+
acquisitions
1,000+
organisations worked with
850+
domains under management
72 agents
OpenClaw fleet running 24/7
80+
web apps shipped
375+
Base44 apps shipped
Why me
Most people selling AI advice do not run anything. I do, every day, with my own money behind it. Everything I teach and everything I build for other people was working in my own estate first.
72
Not a round number, because I can count them. They handle my inbox, my reporting and my ops while I sleep. Live systems with my own money behind them.
375+
That is on top of 80+ web apps. I write the thing and then I run the thing, and the second part is where you find out what you got wrong.
850+
When something breaks at two in the morning, it breaks on me. That is a different job from advising someone else about it.
Not prototypes — full game loops with economies, progression and live deployments, built with the same AI operating layer as everything else.
A cosy 2.5D tycoon built as a road trip: lay out a park where every truck wears its dish on the roof, cook every order yourself, then hit the road — eight towns, eight economies, one long delicious journey.
8 themed towns, each with its own economy, favourite cuisine — and its own way of sabotaging you
11 named cooking mini-games across 13 gestures, plus 53 research recipes on a Signature → Masterpiece ladder
Upload a selfie, get cartoon-ified, and show your chef off on collectible trading cards — Bronze to Legendary
Eleven game builds in the org — one live on its own domain, the rest at various stages behind it, including the competition entry that placed 4th and 7th.
“You're in the top 0.03% of Base44 users — fewer than apps that ever reach #1 on an app store.”
— Base44's own platform message, on the AI app platform Wix acquired for $80M.
Based in Stamford, Lincolnshire, and setting up local Base44 build sessions for business owners there.
Placed in both competitions entered, with a game built to launch on Steam and the app stores rather than to win a weekend.
Production sites shipped in one prompt — my own ventures and websites built for other companies. Design, copy, checkout, live.
OpenClaw and Claude environments configured for personal and business use — optimised through hundreds of live use cases and real feedback.
Unsolicited
These are readers, not clients, and I am not going to dress them up as anything else. They used something I published and then took the time to tell me what happened.
I do not know what was in those files for Claude but they have made it so much better — thanks for that — thinking of designing a space ship as my next request.
Thanks once more Dean, I have created quite an impressive Business Intelligence machine with Fable. Would not have happened without inspiration from you.
Four doors, and three of them cost nothing to open.
Tracks you work through yourself, at whatever pace suits you, included in the membership. Start here if you want to install this without me.
Open the AcademyOne monthly fee for the Academy and the whole Vault library I actually use, cleaned up and dropped in as I build it.
See MembershipThe ladder, from an hour to a day in your business. Prices and what happens on each rung.
See the ladderFor a board that needs the AI seat held by someone accountable. Monthly, part-time, and priced on that page.
See the seatThe site keeps essential storage so it works, and the site and its hosting platform count visits anonymously, with no cookie. Accept and Google Analytics, which sets cookies, counts visits too. Decline and neither the site’s own count nor Google Analytics runs. Nothing creepy. You choose.