Three years in, I woke at 2am, heart pounding. Not with excitement — with dread. Churn was too high. Our best hire had just quit. The problem our first product solved had shifted overnight. And the salary I was paying myself was barely worth mentioning. I lay there thinking: why am I doing this?

I had spent years observing how technology was failing to keep up with the way education institutions needed to support and engage their learners. I understood the market gaps and felt strongly that a better solution was needed to manage the entire learner lifecycle—so I built one. Alongside a co-founder, with limited runway and considerably more optimism than sense.

But three years in, nothing felt inevitable. We were burning through our first £250k raise. The product we had built — pitched to investors, sold to early customers, built a team around — was solving the wrong problem. So we did something that, in retrospect, sounds insane. We decided to build an entirely new product. While fundraising £500k to stay alive. While I was still leading sales. In six weeks.

The mission for Purlos evolved into a multi-product ecosystem built on three pillars: better engagement, transforming communication through WhatsApp, and using AI to drastically reduce the administrative workload on education staff. We pointed our digital products at different critical parts of the learner journey, from initial interest through to long-term success.

While our first breakthrough was a product that automated the tracking of student destinations—replacing a manual process education institutions had handled for decades—it was only the beginning. That success proved our core philosophy: that technology should make education more human, not less. We built the core functionality in just six weeks, and it became the foundation for the market-leading engagement platform Purlos is today.

But here is the twist: I am still here. Still CEO. Still running it. Because it was never about the exit. It was about building something that lasts — and learning that persistence is not a personality trait. It is a discipline. At 2am, when everything feels broken, the only real question is whether you are willing to show up again in the morning. I was. And I still am.