Originally written by Timothy Adler on Small Business
Electrician Richard Fleeman had a problem. As an electrical contractor, a client he’d completed work for had gone bankrupt, leaving him £20,000 out of pocket. Was there a way, he wondered, for tradespeople such as himself to make sure they got paid once the work was done. He talked it over with his cousin, Rob Gallagher, who happened to be studying astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. The pair came up with a digital platform which would be an escrow account for tradespeople using cryptocurrency; the money would be released once the job was completed.
Richard and Rob brought in their friend Phil Daneshyar, who’d already had experience as an entrepreneur, going on Dragon’s Den in 2017 – the year he left the University of York – to pitch a device which monitored your water consumption. Although the dragons held on to their cash, California-based 11 Health licensed the technology to monitor how dehydrated chronically ill patients were.
The trio launched the website Tradesmart last December and, later that month, won £150,000 worth of investment from The Start-Up Series Fund through Worth Capital.
>See also: What winning The Start-Up Series meant for me – Scott