Most conversations about growth focus on scale, very few talk about what it costs, the school runs you don’t make, the time you trade away, the mental load you carry, and the way work slowly bleeds into everything else. For me, growth isn’t just about building something bigger, it’s about what you’re willing to give up along the way.

After 14+ years building and exiting New Icon, I’ve found myself reflecting less on the obvious milestones and more on the shifts that happened on a twisty road, the things that changed how I thought, the impact my decisions had on others, and the moments where we realised we’d outgrown one version of ourselves and needed to become another.

For context, New Icon was a Bristol-based design-led software agency that evolved over time into a product and technology partner for ambitious SMEs and larger enterprises, we started by building websites and ecommerce platforms, and gradually moved into complex back-office systems, connected products and enterprise AI solutions

By the end, we were less of a software agency and more a team that could take a messy business problem and turn it into a working, commercially viable technology solution that actually shifted how companies operated.

The company didn’t grow in a straight line, not even close, it crawled forward at times, it stalled, it reinvented itself, and in the early days it was just graft. Steve and I did everything, design, code, pitch, manage, invoice, forecasting was hopeful rather than scientific, project management was a whiteboard, and most weeks were about just getting through to Friday.

Landing our first £10,000 project felt enormous, a client trip up to Newcastle felt like expansion, and a Friday lunchtime chippy run felt like a genuine reward for making it through another week.

As those early projects started stacking up, the work slowly became more complex. We weren’t just building brochure websites anymore. Ecommerce led to integrations. Integrations led to internal systems. 

In 2014 we delivered a back-office system for Airbus through Steve’s earlier colleague network, which quietly gave us the confidence that we could operate at a different level if the opportunity came along.

A year later, a project for a charter airline was the first time we won something that truly stretched us on our own merit. No inherited relationship, just a problem we understood and fast, tangible ROI for the customer if we delivered.

Their Citation jets were flying clients across Europe to Cannes, Monaco and the like, returning empty. They manually advertised discounted return legs and hoped someone filled them.

The client had an appetite for using technology to automate, so we built a system that pulled availability data, processed it and published it online in near real time. Responsive web design was just becoming prevalent, which expanded the use cases and user base. It replaced a manual process with an engine.

Within 6 months the client joked it had delivered a 5000% ROI. At the time we didn’t fully appreciate what that meant.

Over time we realised the value wasn’t just in the build. It was in the leverage, reassurance and long-term evolution. That project became a catalyst for more structured retainers and ongoing innovation budgets rather than treating launch as the finish line.

Lesson learned: Know your value early. If you’re solving problems that create genuine commercial leverage, your pricing and structure need to reflect that. Long-term evolution is where value sits.

In the early days, growth was organic and energy-led rather than strategic. We were in our mid-twenties and had the energy for events, for networking, for the hustle, and that’s really where everything started. A lot of our early growth came through relationships, 7am meetings, coffee, fry-ups, referrals, just being visible and being present. I formed what I called “power groups”, small collectives of individuals and companies that complemented each other and together created a more joined-up experience for the customer.

That approach worked. It brought in work, it built trust, and it shaped how I still think and operate today. Around that same time, we were also going through our own version of growth physically as well as commercially. We’d moved from working out of a back bedroom into a small office in an old shoe factory, single glazing, freezing cold in winter, boiling hot in summer, mice running around, not exactly glamorous, but it was ours, and it’s where things started to feel real.

That office ended up being a bit of a turning point. I’d seen an advert on a forum from two guys looking to move out of their back bedroom setup after starting New Icon and needing some proper space. We met for a coffee at Porto Lounge in Fishponds, hit it off straight away, and I ended up renting them desks in the office. Steve and Luke settled in, we got to know each other quickly, and before long it felt like we were building something together. They grew quickly, I joined them, and the rest is history.

Steve was a big part of that early dynamic. He had a slightly unusual mix, very technical, but also deeply design-led, which isn’t something you see that often. A bit of a maverick in how he approached things, not overly concerned with how things were “normally” done.

I’ve always been drawn to people like that. Curious, a bit fearless, willing to push things. I think that combination between us shaped the kind of people we attracted early on. People who didn’t just want to deliver work, but wanted to rethink how it could be done.

Then came a bigger decision. We had the opportunity to move into the Bristol and Bath Science Park just as it was opening, brand new, polished, full of ambition, and a very different world to where we were. It was a big financial leap for us at the time, not an easy decision. I remember saying to the guys that perception matters, if we want to be seen as a cutting-edge product and technology company, we need to be in an environment that reflects that. We need to walk the walk, not just talk it.

Lesson learned: Relationships create momentum. The environment you choose accelerates it. And the people you build with shape where it goes.

A few years later we were advised to niche harder. Focus on one or two sectors. Pick a tech stack. Build the business around a clearly defined lane.

We didn’t.

Our belief was that working across sectors meant ideas travelled further. Marine informed insurance. FinTech informed energy. Connected products informed SaaS. That cross-pollination kept the work interesting and forced us to stay adaptable rather than becoming comfortable in one vertical.

What I hadn’t fully appreciated at the time was how much that decision shaped the team we built.

Because we weren’t rigidly defined by one sector or one technology, we attracted a particular type of person. Talented but often under-stretched in their current roles. Some had come from in-house teams where the work was predictable and slow. Others were earlier in their careers, raw but ambitious, hungry to learn and take ownership.

We didn’t have a strict manual for one stack or one niche. The work varied. The expectations were high and autonomy was real. That combination appealed to people who wanted more than a job description. They wanted exposure, responsibility and the chance to work on things that genuinely felt different.

We built an expert team without carrying heavy corporate overheads because we weren’t trying to replicate a corporate structure. We trusted people. We gave them room. In return, they grew fast and carried serious weight.

Looking back, that flexibility and variety didn’t just shape our client base. It shaped our culture and the calibre of people who chose to join us.

Lesson learned: Culture is a strategic asset. If you want innovation, protect pace and mindset. Hire ambitious problem solvers, not just the obvious CV fit.

All companies have a few monumental moments. One of ours was when we somehow found ourselves jetting around the world delivering training to global pharmaceutical companies like Novartis, GSK and Sanofi.

Between 2012 and 2014 we built a live, gamified experiential learning platform for pharmaceutical sales teams. We were flying into hotel conference rooms in Cancun, Madrid and beyond, building local WiFi networks from scratch, connecting 50+ iPads and running immersive actor-led scenarios for hundreds of delegates in a single day.

It had to work. There was no room for “we’ll patch it later.”

We were still relatively young as a business. Probably naive in some ways. The platform utilised web sockets, which at the time was still relatively new. But it worked. It was robust. It delivered. Big pharma loved it.

That project changed how we saw ourselves. We weren’t just building websites and back-office systems. We were designing, developing and operationally delivering complex technology in high-pressure environments.

And it raised a bigger question: if this model works here, where else might it work?

Lesson learned: When something works, replicate the pattern. Innovation isn’t always inventing something new. Sometimes it’s recognising a model that works and applying it intelligently elsewhere.

Over 14 years we unintentionally rebuilt the business several times. Delivering everything from websites to ecommerce, then moving to back-office systems and SaaS. Later connected products and AR/VR – and more recently, AI.

There was a period during the Covid pandemic where I must have taken hundreds of calls from founders pitching ideas. As a systems thinker, I loved stripping away noise, finding the real pain point and working out what was genuinely a good idea versus what just sounded clever.

But something became obvious.Some technically brilliant founders struggled to gain traction. The engineering was solid. The architecture was clean. But the idea didn’t excite anyone.

You can have the best product concept in the world, but if it doesn’t resonate, it doesn’t move.

With my design and brand hat on, I would often push for just enough positioning budget alongside the software build. Not a bloated branding project, but clarity. Mission. Tone. A visual identity that was good enough. Clickable prototypes made the ideas tangible and exciting, as well as testable with users. The goal was to take concepts to a validated stage that investors, stakeholders or Innovate UK assessors could believe in — with evidence and traction behind the marketing.

We weren’t just shipping code anymore. We were shaping embryonic ideas, ensuring the experience matched the ambition and that the product delivered against real business goals.

Lesson learned: Build the right thing, and make people care about it. Solving the correct problem matters. Framing it so people believe in it matters just as much.

We built our own products too, and that was always part of the DNA.

Hotspot came first. UX was shifting away from static wireframes and PDFs, clients wanted something they could click and experience, and rapid prototyping was becoming essential. So we built a tool that allowed us to create interactive, shareable prototypes quickly. It solved a real problem and it worked well, the instinct was right, the market was clearly moving in that direction. A competitor later became a billion-dollar company. That bugged me for a while, if I’m honest, that feeling of being close to something and not quite going all in. But over time I’ve come to see it differently. It wasn’t a missed opportunity as much as a lesson in what it actually takes to turn instinct into a product business.

Around the same time, we were building something much bigger internally.

Neon started life as a CMS and web page builder, but it quickly evolved into something far more ambitious. Steve and Neill, our ops director and CTO, were driving it, both incredibly strong technically and genuinely passionate about solving the problem properly. They could see the limitations in modern frameworks and wanted to improve on them, not just for us, but in a way that made development cleaner and more consistent.

That thinking came off the back of a painful experience a couple of years earlier. We’d been working on a pharmaceutical sales training and experiential learning product, and we’d brought in a couple of very talented developers from Nokia. As part of their autonomy, they chose a relatively new framework at the time, Angular 1 – it was a Google JS framework and you woild have thought mature and very good. On paper, it looked like the future. In reality, it was rough. We pushed it hard on that project, probably further than it had been pushed before, and it exposed all sorts of holes, flaws and rabbit holes. It nearly cost us the delivery, the team and the client. There were rewrites, workarounds, late nights, and a constant feeling that the ground was shifting under our feet.

We got it over the line for a major event, but only just. And that experience stuck.

That’s where Neon was really born. It became a developer layer on top of open-source frameworks, designed to bring structure, consistency and control to how we built software. Over time, we ran large parts of the business through it. We called it “The Hub”, and it powered CRM, HR, project management, timesheets, a wiki, even our phone system. It became our operating system. From a delivery point of view, it was hugely valuable. It aligned the team, sped things up, and gave us a consistent way of working across projects.

But there was a tension. From the outside, Neon started to look like a proprietary New Icon platform, even though in reality it was just a layer on top of open source. As I was selling, I kept hitting the same objection, that sense of vendor lock-in, that only we could work on it, and that created friction in conversations. So we made the call to open source it.

That was a good move. It removed that barrier, made the proposition easier to explain, and gave clients more confidence that they weren’t tied to us forever. It helped commercially, and it aligned better with how it was actually built.

At the same time, we started to see the limits of what we’d created.

We’d built something powerful, but we hadn’t treated it like a product. There wasn’t the same investment in documentation, in onboarding, in marketing, in building a community around it. It served us well internally, but it wasn’t being nurtured in the way a true product needs to be.

As new developers joined, it became harder to work with. It wasn’t always well documented, it hadn’t been consistently progressed, and over time it started to feel like it was ageing. Technology moves fast, and if you don’t move with it, even good ideas start to feel like constraints. We’d solved a problem for a period of time, but we hadn’t built something that could evolve beyond us.

Looking back, both Hotspot and Neon tell a similar story. The instinct to build was strong, and the capability was definitely there. But building a product company requires a different level of focus, investment and long-term commitment than running a services business alongside it.

Instinct matters, but focus matters more. Seeing where the market is heading is valuable, but aligning time, capital and commitment behind it is what turns instinct into something meaningful.

By the time AI emerged, the nature of risk shifted again.

Earlier in our journey, de-risking meant prototyping well and showing people what something might look like. With AI, that wasn’t enough. You could design a compelling concept, but if the data wasn’t there, if APIs didn’t exist, if commercial agreements and governance didn’t stack up, it simply wouldn’t fly.

AI is only as good as the data underneath it — and humans need to trust the algorithms. So the questions became more grounded. Not just “Can we build this?” but “Is this actually feasible? Do we have access to the right datasets? Are the integrations viable? Does the commercial model make sense once infrastructure and usage costs are factored in?”

Lesson learned: Feasibility beats fantasy. Validate data access, integrations and economics as rigorously as the concept itself. De-risk the right areas early.

By the time AI had become part of our core offer, the business itself was also more mature. The conversations were different. The expectations were higher. We were no longer scrappy outsiders; we were running a sizeable operation with governance, process and commercial weight behind it.

That maturity naturally led into the M&A chapter. During the process we were validated commercially and strategically, which was reassuring. But one thing I’ve reflected on more since is the importance of the foundations behind the scenes.

I have a lot to thank Lyn, our finance manager, for. The reminders for receipts, the attention to detail, the things that often felt small or easy to deprioritise when you’re deep in sales and delivery. During the M&A process, I really saw how those details had compounded over the years. Everything was in order. Every “i” dotted, every “t” crossed. What can feel like admin in the moment becomes credibility under scrutiny.

So thank you Lyn Bromley, for the diligence and professionalism I probably didn’t fully appreciate until the point it mattered most.

Lesson learned. The small things matter more than you think, and over time they compound into something far bigger. Sweat the details early, and the bigger picture tends to take care of itself.

That level of detail didn’t just help us get through the process, it set the stage for what came next. Because once the numbers and the diligence stack up, the conversation quickly shifts.

We realised we weren’t being acquired as a Systems Integrator. They already knew that world. They weren’t looking to build a design-led software agency from scratch, that takes time. They wanted to buy, not build. What they saw in New Icon was the missing piece, product thinking, UX, delivery capability, and the ability to turn messy problems into working solutions, something they could plug into a wider systems integrator ecosystem they were building.

What they brought was technology assets and a slightly different emphasis. Less building something purely because we could, and more choosing the right tools and platforms to solve the problem. That evolution made sense to me. It felt like a natural next stage in New Icon’s journey, moving from capability-led to judgement-led.

I stayed part of the senior leadership team for a period, helping navigate that transition, but over time it became clear that both the business and my role within it had shifted.

If I’m honest, seeing that evolution so clearly also made me reflect on my own journey inside the business. Because somewhere along the way, without a big plan, my role had moved from “designer building things” to “strategist shaping products, propositions and how we positioned ourselves”.

I started as a designer. For me, design was never just about visuals, it was about breaking down complex problems, creating structure, and helping people understand what mattered. That naturally extended into marketing, into project delivery, and eventually into sales.

Sales didn’t feel like a departure from design, it felt like another form of it. Listening carefully, reading between the lines, reframing problems, and articulating solutions in a way that made commercial sense.

Even networking felt like system design. Spotting patterns, connecting people, seeing where value might flow if the right dots were joined.

Over time I became more of a generalist out of necessity, designer, project manager, marketer, sales lead. A jack of all trades perhaps, but in complex environments that breadth became useful. It meant I could sit across disciplines and understand how they connected.

As the business grew, the balance shifted. More structure, more targets, more management. Less time shaping ideas at the front end, which is where I naturally gravitate.

At the same time, life outside of work was demanding more as well. And when both sides start to pull at the same time, it forces a bit of reflection.

I’d hoped the next phase of the business might re-energise me in a different way, but in reality it introduced a different kind of pressure at a different level. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just part of how businesses evolve.

For me, it became clear that the role I’d grown into, and the kind of problems I most enjoy solving, were starting to diverge. So I made the decision that it was the right time to step away and create space for what comes next.

Lesson learned. Growth changes your role. The skills that build a business are not always the same ones required to run it at scale. Be intentional about the kind of problems you want to spend your time solving.‍

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Which is why this next chapter feels deliberate rather than reactive. I’m drawn back to shaping ideas early. Breaking down complex problems. Connecting dots. Stress-testing feasibility before teams over-invest. Helping founders and leadership teams see patterns sooner.

My appetite for thoughtful, commercially grounded innovation hasn’t gone anywhere, I’m just channelling it in a way that fits this phase of my life.

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