Some of the North West’s most highly-rated entrepreneurs shared their secrets for growth at BusinessCloud’s FUEL Liverpool event.
FUEL Liverpool consisted of two events in one, starting with a business breakfast followed by a series of masterclass sessions.
The day was sponsored by Growth Platform and Liverpool Business School at Liverpool John Moores University and formed part of the LCR Innovation Investment Fortnight (IIF) programme, which runs until May 23rd.
The business breakfast was held at a packed Nova Scotia and delegates heard from two panels.
FUEL Liverpool masterclasses
The first speaker was Stephen Smullen, managing director of PB Group, which includes Protein Bargain Wholesale and five other brands.
Smullen has grown turnover to £30m in five years and staff numbers to 55 with zero investment.
The protein entrepreneur has reinvested the profits back into the business and is targeting £100m turnover by 2030, with an expansion into Europe on the cards.
“Usually the good things will come regardless. But if you reinvest everything, [it helps] you to get into that position,” he said.
“In the next eight to 10 weeks, we should be in a facility, which will really help us [to grow further].”
Michelle Laithwaite is the CEO and co-founder of Warrington-based online meal prep firm FuelHub.
She launched the business with her husband James, a former professional rugby league player, in 2019 and has grown it to £4m turnover.
FuelHub has secured some of the world’s biggest sporting clubs including Chelsea FC, Fulham FC, Manchester United FC, Team GB and England Rugby Union as clients.
In 2022 AJ Bell founder Andy Bell co-led a £1.2m investment in the meal delivery startup alongside Fergus Lyons, a former director of AJ Bell.
The company is currently working on a Series A fundraise and is preparing to move to a new HQ soon which will triple its capacity.
“It was quite a congested market,” said Laithwaite. “In the UK, we’re the youngest of the [companies in our space].
“When we started, we decided that the USP would be that we would get the gold seal of approval from athletes, and that would help the direct-to-consumer model – if an athlete is consuming the food, then you can trust it. We used Warrington Wolves as our first B2B customer and it just organically got traction.
“Then when COVID hit and the facilities at sports clubs had to close, so many nutritionists recommended us to teams and athletes. It just spiralled: we ended up doing lots of Premier League teams and top athletes – people from Team GB, England Rugby Union – and it’s just continued. A lot of the growth is from organic referrals.”
In a Q&A between panels, Lorna Green, CEO of LYVA Labs and LCR Ventures, revealed how they’d made 20 investments totalling £1.7m, half of which were to female founders.
Nicola Docking is the MD of Liverpool-based Poke Marketing, which has grown to £1.2m turnover on the back of some high profile client wins including Liverpool Cathedral, National Football Museum, Alder Hey Children’s Charity and EFL.
She said the region would benefit by focusing on brand Liverpool instead of Liverpool City Region.
“By using the phrase LCR, we’re slightly diluting Liverpool as a city. I was getting my hair cut and I casually said the phrase ‘LCR’,” she recounts. “My hairdresser – a born-and-bred scouser – didn’t know what I was talking about!
“I realised what a complete echo chamber we’re in, in this business community in Liverpool. We all use it like it’s a phrase, but it’s not – and it’s certainly not a phrase outside of Liverpool.”
She added: “A lot of satellite towns around Manchester are really proud to use Manchester as the attack brand: Wigan, for example, would sell themselves as being accessible to Manchester. ‘Wigan is brilliant, it’s a great place to live, great shops and businesses… and it’s close to Manchester.’ But it’s not trying to be Manchester.”
FUEL Liverpool at Nova Scotia
Colin Greene is a partner of Praetura Ventures and previously worked at Apple. He met Apple founder Steve Jobs on several occasions and spoke about CEO Tim Cook’s obsession with detail.
“I was in meetings with Tim several times a week. He is very much an introvert, very much a pragmatist,” said Greene.
“He was the chief operating officer at Apple and I’ve never met anyone with more of an eye for detail. I’ve never met anyone who can see straight through you and know all the things that you don’t know – and know that you don’t know them!
“He will dig through and make sure that he finds out the answers to the questions. From the outside looking in, it’s changing people’s lives through technology; but inside, it’s ‘Colin, how many iPhones did Best Buy buy last week?’ Apple is a business that is really driven – with a mix of both attention to detail, as well as the big strategic vision about where the company’s going.”
The other speakers were: Rob Sims, CEO, Sum Vivas; Adam Shore, director, Liverpool Business School at LJMU; and Scott Robertson, co-founder, Haulage Hub.
The event was hosted by BusinessCloud’s executive editor Chris Maguire and was followed by a series of masterclasses, where a select group of 25+ businesses had direct access to series of experts and entrepreneurs.