Pitching your business is daunting at the best of times.
Now imagine that you are thousands of feet in the air on a Virgin Atlantic flight – and Richard Branson is walking past.
Jack Whettingsteel, co-founder of Helpbnk with Simon Squibb and Callum Church, had prepared for the moment. “I was joining my partner, who was a crew member with Virgin, on a trip to Jamaica and managed to get upgraded to first class,” he tells me on a Founder Friday trip to London.
“She told me that Richard was on the flight. I knew I couldn’t pass up the chance to pitch him.
“So I sat at the bar for four hours, pretending to work, until he finally came walking past.”
After making “slightly awkward” eye contact, the business magnate politely asked him what he was working on… and, in the words of Jack, “the rest is history”.
So what did he pitch? Let’s start at the beginning.
School
Jack, who is from a small town outside Bournemouth, found school frustrating. “Why did I have to do a science lesson every day of the week and take six science exams, when I hate it; but only get to do one media lesson, and one exam, when that’s what I love?” he asks.
He moved to London to study music business at the University of Westminster but soon found himself back home again thanks to the first Covid lockdown.
“I began seeing entrepreneurship content on TikTok, which was just becoming mainstream. I didn’t even know what entrepreneurship was at the time, which sounds crazy,” he says.
“My brain started to light up a little bit as to what was possible: I started learning about things that school had never taught me, from mortgages to the stock market to business.
“So when I moved back to London, I never attended another lecture.”
Still just 19 and working at Sainsbury’s after “blagging a role as an assistant manager”, he began documenting his early attempts at entrepreneurship with live broadcasts during his shifts.
“I found that my lives got a lot more viewers when I was in the Sainsbury’s uniform, because people recognised it and were like ‘you shouldn’t be doing that’,” he grins.
He had earlier realised the potential of social media when, while working in a Co-op store back home, he racked up more than a million views with a CCTV video where he was knocked into a stack of red wine bottles by accident – resulting in a mock crime scene.
“It made me realise that in this new age of social, to reach people you don’t need followers, money or even that much skill – you just need to try stuff!
“I was told to delete the footage and that I could get fired – but I refused to take it down. I guess I always had a bit of a problem with authority and the system.
“Part of me wishes that I could now be in school as a young kid today, knowing what’s possible – because I probably would have dropped out at 15.”
After doing just enough to earn a 2:1 – “mainly to make my parents proud” – he moved to Sussex with his partner and within weeks was earning £5k a month producing copywriting and email marketing for clients.
“I’d continued to document my self-development and entrepreneurial journey on TikTok,” he says. “That’s how I met my co-founders: Callum had a self-development podcast and was putting his clips on TikTok – he was editing for [Steven Bartlett’s podcast] Diary of a CEO at the time – while Simon was giving advice to his younger self on TikTok.”
They teamed up to grow Simon’s social media profile, which already numbered in the hundreds of thousands several years after he’d sold his agency Fluid to PwC in a multi-million-pound deal. He has since invested in dozens of startups.
Helpbnk
Helpbnk was then born in 2023. The idea? To provide advice for building a business without selling courses.
“Simon said he wanted to create a billion-dollar company that could change the world, and for it to be a lot bigger than just him,” says Jack. “We said he would love to co-found it with us, which was a life-changing opportunity really.
“Our shared mission was – and remains – to help people worldwide be free and follow their dream… and to fix the education system.
“We saw quite a lot of growth very quickly. I think we hit a million followers on TikTok within four months.”
HelpBnk is a social media platform and community which connects users seeking advice, funding or resources with mentors and investors.
Doorbell of Dreams
A leftfield idea from Simon which would eventually become core to the Sir Richard pitch initially left Jack and Callum scratching their heads.
“He’d heard on the news that there was a staircase for sale in Twickenham – a staircase that literally goes nowhere,” explains Jack. “We went along with it and Simon won the bid at auction for £25k.
“Because it was such a bizarre story, it had been covered by global media beforehand – so suddenly the BBC and the New York Times were there to speak to us.
“They were like: ‘Who would buy this staircase to nowhere?’ We had no PR at the time and it was a genius marketing stunt: we told them it symbolised the step-by-step climb to success.”
There was another angle to this story which was very personal. “Simon was homeless for a time when he was 15, after his father died and his mum kicked him out. He had slept under a staircase at one point, so it was symbolic for him too.
“He said: ‘I want people to be able to come and pitch to our staircase.”
They installed a Ring video doorbell at the top which people could then use to pitch their business idea. The team then posted the best pitches to their social media accounts as well as Helpbnk.
“If you want to start a business, there’s not many places you can go to get help for free. The doorbell existed as that potential opportunity for people in the real world to be able to pitch,” explains Jack, who says that hundreds have since founded and grown businesses.
“The theory behind everything that we do is that anyone who has a dream can go and make it happen if they have the right opportunities, tools and network.”
He adds with a smile: “It was just a grey door – but we’ve just had it redone so it looks really pretty now!”
HelpBnk is a mainly online platform serving a global community, with some curated in-person events and accelerators.
“We give everyone a free mentorship programme and they can sign up with our partners to use the tools they will need anyway to run a successful business anyway. The affiliates then pay us on the back end.”
The company’s main revenue source is from video advertising, thanks to its audience of millions.
Dream Group
The next stage is to produce physical products. The first of these was Simon’s book, What’s Your Dream?, published by Penguin and a Sunday Times No.1 business bestseller. A version of this for kids has also been released which aims to show them how to follow their passion and turn it into a business.
“We want to show that there is a third track when it comes to education – entrepreneurship – away from university and apprenticeships,” says Jack, who is now 25.
Coming soon is DreamBrew, a subscription coffee which the newly formed Dream Group – of which Jack is CEO, with just short of 50 employees around the world – will also eventually look to sell in retail stores.
“When you buy DreamBrew, 10% of the profits go to fund people’s dreams – and if you scan the QR code on the back, you get to submit your own dream for the chance to get funded,” explains Jack.
“It’s about taking on these real-world industries, such as Starbucks, but with a purpose – and also to remind people, wherever they’re interacting with us, of their dream.”
The group has also invested in two businesses which align with their mission: Swedish firm Lovable, a platform that allows people to build apps and websites by chatting with AI; and LA-based Stan, a storefront platform for creators to sell digital products, online courses, coaching sessions, memberships and event bookings from a single link in a bio.
Pitch perfect
Back to the Virgin Atlantic pitch: Jack so impressed Sir Richard with the mission and story of the Doorbell of Dreams that he agreed to install one in his Virgin Hotel in London. Another followed in New York, as well as a ‘Dream Machine’ mobile doorbell bus which travelled the length and breadth of the UK in partnership with Virgin Startup.
Simon Squibb and Sir Richard Branson. Credit – Virgin
“I’m a big believer that you create your own reality through energy and self-development,” concludes Jack, who is relocating to Dubai for now.
“It’s total luck that you end up being on the same flight as Richard Branson; but too many things like that have happened in my life for it to be just luck.
“If you are a positive force on the universe, trying to do good, that will allow you to create the life that you want – both for yourself and for the world.”
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