A straight-talking lad from Scunthorpe who forged his path from steel-town roots to serial entrepreneur. Eddie bootstrapped his first startup, The Defence Works, as a sole founder and turned it into a multi-million-pound exit to a NASDAQ-listed giant in less than 4 years.
Not bad for a guy who started out chasing criminals around the North of England as a copper, before qualifying as a lawyer in Manchester – then jacking it all in to start a business.
Since Eddie’s first business exit, he’s gone on to found a number of different businesses in Manchester: from flipping a 19th-century chapel into a premium workspace to co-founding a children’s sleepwear brand. He’s also behind a founder-driven productivity service designed to help neurodiverse entrepreneurs cut the crap and scale their businesses.
Eddie is well-connected in the UK startup scene and doesn’t sugarcoat the grind. He calls it as he sees it—delivering the hard truths about business with the kind of blunt honesty you’d expect from someone who was raised in Scunthorpe and became a self-made entrepreneur in Manchester.
Eddie’s working on building a legacy that’s more than a few businesses on a balance sheet. He’s all about empowering the next generation of founders, helping them navigate the brutal reality of entrepreneurship with a little more honesty and a lot less fluff – and helping those from unconventional backgrounds catch up to those who’ve had a leg up.
