At the age of 14 I started a small ‘Avon’ style magazine in my neighbourhood for house hold products where I would essentially drop ship products to my neighbours.  At 16 I started a company called Xcite that ran U18’s events in the south west. This quickly became the largest U18 events company in the south west, turning over £5,000-9000 a month. I then applied for BBC Junior apprentice show and got to the final 20 out of 35,000 applicants from across the UK. I essentially sold Xcite’s database to my biggest competitor at 18 years old because I wanted to move to Manchester to study business. 

 

I was at University for 3 months before I got the idea for my current venture. The initial inspiration derived from the frustration I had from sitting playing Xbox with the same friend every day at university and realising how unconnected I was to the other 100,000 students in my city. This was coupled with the fact that there was nowhere for me to post a message to the students at my university (that we needed a goalkeeper for the university football team), except the unused pin-up noticeboard in the student union. However, I had no idea whatsoever how to build a website and I had a full-time degree to worry about, so common sense should of told me to forget about it, but unfortunately for my furious mother that wasn’t in my nature.  So, I made the decision (against her will) to drop out of University to pursue it! The following months would prove to be the hardest of my life. I was 18 with no money (when I say no money I mean less than £2 in change, bank account and credit cards completely overdrawn with bailiff letters on their way), my student loan had stopped because I was no longer a student, I was 300 miles from home and I had absolutely no idea how to execute my idea.

 

I would sit in my room for months, mixing water with a 10KG bag of powdered oats to feed myself. I lost nearly 2 stone in weight over this period and completely forfeited socialising with anyone outside of our halls of residence because I couldn’t afford a bus let alone a drink. I sat there tweaking designs I had unprofessionally produced on publisher, which was the only computer program I could use well. I was knocking together this complicated student platform that would unite the student world online, there were 10 tabs across the top, an area for webcam live chatting and a million other features. I think I was under the rookie impression that more = more. Finally I added a little wall into the corner of the website as somewhat of an accessory. I spent several weeks criticising my concept and late at night I remember asking myself, “what are people going to use this wall for?” At that moment it dawned on me that the wall would/could essentially be used for the same purpose as the rest of the site combined. I remember having this epiphany in the shower of all places and much of it was inspired by the way that the tiles were laid out! 

 

I got out of the shower and decided that, after several months of working on it, I was going to scrap everything on the site except this little wall. I decided that simplicity and minimalism could have much more impact and would help me to produce a much more useful product so I focused on making this wall super intelligent and unique. 

 

At this point my mobile phone had been cut off due to 3-4 months of unpaid bills, so I decided to sell it to allow myself to feed myself for another month as the Oats were running low. I finally had a presentable design, printed out on to a piece of A3 paper and a concept that I believed in and could explain well. So after much begging, the university agreed to let me meet with the Director of marketing and communications (Alan Fern) who had been at the University for 20 years and who reviewed new ideas all the time. 

 

He absolutely loved it. He commented that it was probably the best idea that he had ever had proposed to him and he gave me his full support, even commenting that the University would potentially pay a yearly subscription to use the wall to communicate with their students if we reached a critical mass in Manchester. 

 

This was the little bit of hope I needed and it put the wind in my sails. Over the next month I would contact a seed investor who built and sold Europe’s largest student chat room. He loved the idea and acted as a mentor / tiny seed investor. I still didn’t have the technical expertise to build the platform, so I spent several weeks/months meeting and pitching the idea to Developers. I met a 30 year old developer called Chris Williams who I offered to pay a small amount of the seed investment too, if he would build the site, Chris turned around and said keep the money, give me equity. 

 

Over the following months I had real momentum, I had met with all the universities in Manchester (all of which loved it), and I had met with hundreds of businesses. The site was set to go live in Manchester 14 months after I had dropped out. I got a call from Virgin Media Pioneers who had heard about what I was doing and I was nominated to speak at a prestigious London conference dubbed as “The UK’s Next Creative Pioneer” by the Metro newspaper. I didn’t realise that all the largest companies in the world would be in attendance including Facebook and Coca Cola. I was 19 years old (still starving myself because I had no money), being interviewed on stage in front of 300 people from the media and business world. I told them about my idea and my vision for revolutionising the way that the student world communicates and showed them my unshakeable passion. I would later be awarded “Speaker of the day” and would be swamped by investors wanting to invest in me and on one occasion wanting me to lead up other ventures with them, before I could even get back to my table.

My company now has 6 investors which act as a pool of expertise as well as financial baking. These investors include Alistair who built Europe’s largest student chat room, Tim and Steve who built what was Europe’s largest social network ‘Friends Reunited’ which they sold to ITV for 200 million. Marc who is CEO at the largest media agency in the world, another investor who recently sold his online business for half a billion dollars and several others. 

 

We launched the simple beta product in Manchester (which was used by all 3 universities here) in February and we hit our 9 month user acquisition target in just 3 weeks. Making Wallpark Manchester’s largest student website in a month. I have agreed advertising deals with some of Europe’s largest student companies now that we have proofed the concept and 5 months after launching we are moving out of Beta this September and taking the platform to every city in the UK. I have just signed a contract to raise a 2nd round of investment (this morning) to do so. I have a total of 11 people working at Wallpark and as the CEO/Managing Director I am the youngest at 20 years old! The average age of our staff is 21.2! 

 

After picking up a national newspaper one day and reading about me, my mum is no longer furious! She’s very supportive. My English dad has always been supportive because he’s seen my entrepreneurial side since I was 14. I’m pleased to say that I no longer have to survive on powdered oats mixed with water! 

(18 year old Steve took photos of the oats and water, the bailiff letters and the maxed out credit cards, to remind future Steve of the struggle he went through, I have attached these images to the Supporting submission material section)