I will be honest. If you had told me five years ago that I would be starting an accountancy firm, I would have laughed.

And then I would have remembered that my father was a trained accountant. And that his father was too.

Both of them were also fighter pilots, which probably explains a few things about how I approach most problems. But the accounting thread was always there, running quietly in the background, waiting for the moment it would become relevant.

Apparently that moment is now.

Not because I have anything against accountants — some of my best decisions have involved very good ones. But starting a firm was not exactly the obvious next move for someone who has spent twenty years in product leadership, military operations, and technology organisations.

And yet. Here we are. The bug was in there somewhere all along.

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How you end up somewhere unexpected

It did not happen overnight. It happened the way most good decisions do — through a combination of pattern recognition, a couple of conversations with the right people, and the quiet realisation that an obvious opportunity had been sitting in front of me for years.

The pattern I kept seeing: brilliant businesses, terrible operating models. Solid revenue, no system. Great people running everything on institutional memory and goodwill, with no real structure underneath it.

The conversations: with an old Sandhurst buddy, and an accountant who thinks like a product person, which turns out to be extraordinarily rare and immediately interesting.

The realisation: that accountancy, of all sectors, is one of the most under-productised, under-systematised, and therefore under-valued categories of business that exists. Recurring revenue, sticky clients, high trust relationships — and almost nobody treating it like the asset it actually is.

So I am doing something about it.

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This is completely in my wheelhouse

Here is the thing that makes this less surprising than it sounds.

Everything I have ever done — in the Army, on the rugby pitch, in product organisations — has been about the same thing. Taking something complex, understanding what it is actually supposed to do, building the system that makes it do that reliably, and then scaling it without the wheels falling off.

That is exactly what most accountancy firms need.

They do not need more accountants. They need someone who understands operating models. Someone who can define the service, structure the pricing, build the delivery system, and turn a founder-dependent practice into something that runs, grows, and eventually exits on its own terms.

That person does not typically come from accountancy. They come from product. They come from systems. They come from environments where clarity and repeatability are not optional.

That is me. This is my wheelhouse. I just needed the right entry point.

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The bigger play — buying what boomers built

Starting is just the beginning.

Right now, across the UK, there is an enormous number of business owners in their late fifties and sixties who built something real over thirty years and have no clear path out. Strong client relationships. Solid recurring revenue. High retention. But operationally, most of them are running on spreadsheets, personal relationships, and the energy of people who will not be there forever.

They are difficult to sell not because they are bad businesses — but because they were never built to be sold. Never systematised. Never made to run without the founder in the middle of everything.

That is the opportunity.

Buy them. Modernise the operating model. Systematise the service delivery. Build the thing properly. Then either scale it or position it for a real exit.

This is one of the most significant wealth transfer events of our generation and most of it will be wasted because the right buyers do not show up. Most people look at a founder-dependent professional services firm and see hard work. I look at it and see an operating model problem with a known solution.

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Why now, and why this

I want to build things that compound. Not just side hustles - which have their place. Not just consulting engagements that end when the project ends - but pay the heating bills. Actual businesses with real cashflow, real growth levers, and real exit potential.

Accountancy ticks every box. Recurring revenue. Sticky clients. Acquisition upside. Structural value that grows as the operating model improves. And a market full of businesses that are genuinely undervalued because nobody has applied the right thinking to them.

Doing this alongside someone who is both a qualified accountant and genuinely wants to think like a product person is the piece that makes it work. That combination is rare. When you find it, you move.

I did not set out to start an accountancy firm.

But I did set out to build things that matter, that work properly, and that create real value for the people involved.

It turns out that is exactly what this is.

Funny how that happens.

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Thank you MT & Dicky.

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