The Ride of My Life
Reflections on founding Year Here and stepping down as CEO after 8 years.
It was the third day of the first Year Here Fellowship when I finally submitted to the exhaustion of all the late-night, last-minute prepping I’d been doing in the run up to our launch. The first 12 Fellows were sat in a circle listening carefully. Somebody else was leading the session. I could relax for a moment.
My eyes glazed over and I found myself staring at the floor. Then I glanced up a bit at all the Fellows’ feet, at their 12 pairs of shoes. Shoes worn by human beings, I thought to myself, who’d entrusted their careers to me for a year of their lives. These 12 people were throwing themselves into an experience that was just some scribbled post-it notes a few months prior. In that delirious moment, that fact seemed utterly bonkers to me.
Throughout that first programme, I continued to be astonished that all the Fellows were still there. After every long day of training, intense reflection session or 24 hour challenge, we’d decamp to a bar and I would ply them with drinks to keep their attention averted from the fact that they’d committed to a programme that I was making up as I went along.
Fast forward to 2020 and we’ve just recruited our 200th Fellow. The heady days of our inaugural cohort seem like a lifetime ago. But I like to remember that sense of wonder and responsibility I felt so acutely at the start. I remind myself that Fellows who start ventures on Year Here may well feel something very similar. Finishing the course with an idea for a new business and a bit of seed capital is something that 2015 Fellow and Cracked It founder Josh Babarinde describes as like being thrown off a cliff. Thankfully, your wings appear when you need them.
Having decided to step down as CEO this summer, it’s prompted a whole lot of reminiscence – mostly about the people who made chapter one of Year Here’s story possible.
I do not ascribe to the idea of entrepreneurs as heroes who singlehandedly build their world-conquering businesses. I know that crafting and growing Year Here has been a team effort since day one.
There have been the many wingmen and wingwomen — hat tip to Cynthia Shanmugalingam, Robin Chu, Mike Simpson, Kirsty Turnbull, Kelly Bewers and James Teasdale — who’ve shared in the responsibilities, the burdens and the joys of running a startup.
And there’s also the friends and family who make allowances for you when you’re so consumed by your work that you’re not nearly as considerate or thoughtful as you should be. One Saturday, after a particularly gruelling bootcamp week, I suddenly realised that I was supposed to be at my brother’s house, hours before, for his 40th birthday party. In my exhausted catatonia, I’d completely forgotten. He forgave me, like everyone always seemed to do.
I have loved seeing Year Here grow into the beast that it is today. It is so much bigger than me — with mentors I’ve never met, placements I’ve never visited and ventures delivering work in parts of the country I’ve never even been to. It has its own momentum, driven forward by a wonderful cast of characters.
If this post were a film, this would be the montage moment.
This is 8 years in a flash:
16 offices
From pokey attics in Dalston to freezing abandoned offices in Croydon with dodgy wifi (sorry 2015 cohort 😬), our first few years were pretty nomadic. In 2017, we finally put down roots at our lush social innovation studio in Hackney. Rolling out onto London Fields to brainstorm a venture idea, play rounders, or drink beer at the end of the week has been a wonderful perk.
110 Partners
Our range of partners is ridiculous: from tiny community centres, care homes and homeless hostels to NatWest, Sainsbury’s and the EU. Bringing together such an eclectic mix of organisations, each with its own take on how social change happens, is one of the things that makes Year Here such a powerful learning experience.
10 Farewells
The final day of the course has never passed without tears. In particular, the 2015/16 cohort’s last day is etched in my mind. It was the day after the Brexit referendum. The vibe was schizophrenic: half funeral wake for the country as we knew it, half joyful celebration of a momentous year. We threw in a spontaneous dance party for good measure.
64 team members
In 2014 a Civil Service Fast Streamer, Becky Thomas, walked into a grubby office in Camden for the first day of a six month secondment to Year Here. My colleague Mike and I suddenly realised we didn’t have enough chairs for all three of us. Becky later admitted she thought to herself in that moment “what is this two-man shitshow?” Today, happily, our 10-strong crew is brimming with talent. It’s the most high-performing, hard-working, lovely team I’ve ever been part of.
In 2020, we’re an army of 200+ Fellows, including engineers, artists and coders. Collectively, they’ve contributed over 130,000 hours of their time at the frontline of inequality in London. Our ever-flourishing venture portfolio has reached over 30,000 people — from care leavers who are all but abandoned by the state to refugees struggling to find work in a new country.
Every time I pick up the Evening Standard, it seems, there’s another Year Here alum doing something great. And there have been more appearances in Forbes, Observer New Radicals and Women in Social Enterprise lists than I can count. Sure, these might be vanity metrics, but the recognition has given me innumerable ‘proud dad’ moments.
The future for Year Here looks so damn good. This year, we’re launching an accelerator programme to give the ventures coming out of the programme an even better platform to shoot for scale – with investment, office space and market access. We’ll also be launching a foundation to take our work to widen access to the programme even further. And we’ll be expanding our board too.
Although my day-to-day role will draw to a close this summer, I’ll remain on the board and I look forward to contributing in new ways.
The thank you list is immense. From early partners who took a punt on us to friends and family who bore with me when was a rubbish friend, brother, son or boyfriend. The mentors, the clients, the investors and the faculty, too, have all been incredible.
And of course the Fellows themselves. Thank you for making the courageous decision to join us for a year of your lives (and in many cases, much longer) even when the free booze dried up. When you map out a theory of change the world is understood as logical and linear. But reality is far less drab than that. You Fellows, the thread running through Year Here’s theory of change, turn our mission into something technicolour. Your imagination and drive has taken Year Here into directions I could never have envisioned and I’m so grateful for it. You lot will make me laugh, make me think, and give me hope that we can actually build a better society — for a very very long time to come.
From a few post-its on a wall, a movement has been born.
And what a ride, it’s been. ✌🏻
