In short
- I built a crypto brand from nothing with no funding, and it grew into something worth millions, talked about all over the world.
- I poured almost everything into brand and marketing, the parts that came naturally, and quietly avoided product, operations and culture.
- Mind your weak lane harder than your strong one. Mind the whole thing, not just the half you love.
A few years ago I built something from nothing. No funding. No investors. No safety net. Just an idea, a handful of people I trusted, and a refusal to do it the way everyone else did.
It worked. It grew into something worth millions, talked about all over the world, with a community that crackled with energy. One of the proudest moments of my life was seeing the logo on my boys' sports kits and hearing them point and say, "that's my Daddy's company." I'll carry that forever.
I eventually exited. Some of that was life. I lost my mum, and my family went through real health struggles, and when that happens, the noise goes quiet, fast. You start asking what actually matters. But the honest version is that life wasn't the only reason. I'd made mistakes too, the kind you only see clearly with a bit of distance, and I want to share them, because I think a lot of founders are quietly making the same ones right now.
What I got right
I played to my strengths. I'm a creative. Brand, marketing, story, the wild and slightly unhinged ideas that make people stop scrolling. That's my home, and it's where this thing came alive. While everyone else was running the same tired playbook, we were doing things that had personality, and personality is the one thing in this game that money cannot buy.
There is little better than building something real alongside people you love and trust. Almost everyone I brought in was a friend of old, people I knew were exceptional at what they did and knew had my back. For a long time it was everything I'd hoped it would be.
When I was in my lane, surrounded by those people, I was good. The growth proved it. I don't think you should ever apologise for being great at the thing you're great at, and I won't.
Personality is the one thing in this game that money cannot buy.
What nearly broke me
Here's the part that's harder to write.
I loved my lane so much that I barely left it. I poured almost everything into the brand and the marketing, the parts that came naturally, and I quietly avoided the parts that didn't. Product. Operations. The unglamorous machinery underneath that has to work for any of the shiny stuff to mean anything.
I told myself I was playing to my strengths. What I was actually doing was avoiding the parts that scared me. The marketing got louder while the foundations got shakier, and the gap between those two things is where the real trouble was building.
Have a go
Where did the hours go?
Drag the slider from the half I loved towards the whole thing.
The marketing got louder while the foundations got shakier.
The culture shifted too. The thing I'd set out to build, the values I wanted at the centre of it all, slowly drifted into something I didn't recognise. I can't put that on anyone else, because culture is the founder's job and I'd taken my eye off it. I was busy in the lane I loved while the heart of the thing moved somewhere I hadn't chosen. My team have spoken about it since, openly, and they're right to. I felt it too. I just felt it too late.
And then there was the part nobody warns you about. Building something with your friends, the wins feel bigger, because you're sharing them with the people who matter most. But when things get hard, that same closeness becomes the heaviest thing you carry. It stops being headcount on a spreadsheet. It's your mates. Their mortgages. Their families. Their belief in you. Holding that when the ground starts to move is a pressure I don't think you can understand until you've lived it.
By the time I properly looked up, a lot had drifted. Not because anyone was the villain, but because the founder, me, had been watching one half of the company and trusting the other half to take care of itself. It doesn't. It never does.
What I'd tell you now
Mind your weak lane harder than your strong one. The part of the business you love will always get your attention. It's the part you avoid that decides whether you make it.
Culture is a job, not a vibe. It does not look after itself while you do the fun stuff. It drifts the moment you stop steering, and by the time you feel it, it's already moved. I know, because mine did.
And do not lose yourself in any of it. No valuation, no community, no amount of being talked about is worth becoming someone you don't recognise, or missing the people and moments in your real life that you never get back. I learned that one from both directions at once, and I wouldn't wish that timing on anyone.
Where I am now
I run TH3M.com, a creative agency I've been building since 2016. I work with founders every week who are exactly where I was. Brilliant at one part of their company, privately terrified of another, watching their brand and their culture pull in directions they didn't choose.
I'm not writing this to look wise. I made every one of these mistakes with my own name and my own money on the line. But I also had wins I'll be proud of for the rest of my life, and the two are not separate stories. They're the same one. The wins came from knowing my strengths. The wreckage came from hiding inside them.
The wins came from knowing my strengths. The wreckage came from hiding inside them.
If you're a founder and any of this feels a little too familiar, that's not a weakness. That's just the job showing you its hard edge.
Mind the whole thing. Not just the half you love.
