I didn't plan to become a founder. But looking back, the instinct was always there.
At university I worked for Red Bull, not because I needed the job, but because it let me use a different part of my brain. The creative part. The part that wanted to understand why people bought things, what made a brand feel alive, how you moved a room. I had the financial acumen from my studies. Red Bull gave me the flavour for what it felt like when those two things worked together. I didn't have a name for it then. I do now.
After seven years at Goldman Sachs, I co-founded HANX. The UK's first sexual wellness brand built with women in mind. What started with a condom designed for women who were tired of being an afterthought in their own sexual health became something much larger. A women's health platform covering each stage of the journey. Sexual wellness, prescription contraception, supplements, GLP-1s. From first time to first child, menopause and beyond. Joined up properly for the first time.
We built it into Boots, Tesco, Sephora, Sainsbury's and many other retailers. We launched in the US. We raised £3m across five rounds from angels and institutions including Morgan Stanley. We built a community that reshaped how the category understood women's health. Thousands of women DM'd us with health problems they hadn't told their doctors. Women who'd spent years being ignored by brands that weren't built for them. The thing I'm most proud of isn't the retail doors or the funding rounds. It's the trust.
We built all of this against considerable structural resistance. Payment providers withdrew our facilities. Web hosts and platforms did the same. Many VC funds had vice clauses that precluded them from investing in our category. Despite clear commercial traction, institutional backing was structurally off the table for years. We were operating in a taboo sector. I was a female founder of colour. The market hadn't caught up yet.
I took the platform censorship fight to the Houses of Parliament and 10 Downing Street. I kept building anyway.
In some ways we were too early. But being too early in the right category is its own kind of advantage. You understand the terrain before anyone else arrives.
That experience is what I bring to the work I do now.
I'm most energised working with founders and companies building in markets where the commercial opportunity is real but the conventional playbook doesn't exist. That's the territory I know best. It's also where the most interesting problems live.