I grew up in Belfast in an entrepreneurial family, surrounded by business owners who shaped my perspective on work, risk, and opportunity. At the time, Belfast wasn’t the easiest place to build and scale a business, so in my early school days, I aspired to be a professional golfer and had the privilege of representing Ireland at U18 and U21 levels. Playing alongside Rory McIlroy gave me a front-row seat to greatness, and I realised another career path might be more sensible! That led me to London, where I spent over a decade in investment banking and tech before co-founding Raylo.
The intersection of finance and technology is where interesting innovation happens. It’s what excites me – creating new financial products and services, opening up markets, and solving big problems through technology. That’s exactly what we’re doing at Raylo.
We launched Raylo in 2019 because we saw a huge opportunity to offer a fundamentally better way for customers to access devices like smartphones, tablets, and laptops. The traditional model of ownership, with its high upfront costs and constant pressure to upgrade, felt outdated and unsustainable. Our platform enables the lease-and-reuse of tech devices, making them more accessible, affordable, and sustainable. Customers love our unique flexibility – monthly rolling subscriptions or the market’s lowest monthly price for longer-term leases. This allows us to serve both price-sensitive customers and fast-growing, subscription-loving segments, including small businesses.
At its core, our mission is to accelerate the move to a circular economy in the $1.5 trillion electronic devices market. Beyond the customer benefits, our model delivers a major sustainability impact. Most devices transacted via our marketplace are brand new, but because we recover them at the end of their subscription, we extend their lifespan through refurbishment and reuse. This directly addresses the growing problem of e-waste and reduces the carbon footprint of devices by up to 56% compared to traditional ownership models. To date, Raylo has prevented tons of e-waste from entering landfill and leases thousands of refurbished devices each month.
We’ve grown Raylo to £35M ARR and are still in the early stages of our mission. But Raylo wouldn’t be where it is today without my two phenomenal co-founders, Richard Fulton and Jinden Badesha. Richard and I met back in 2007 when I was an intern at Goldman Sachs, and I worked closely with Jinden at Funding Circle. One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned is the importance of choosing the right co-founders. The strength and cohesiveness of our founding team – and now our senior leadership team – has been crucial to navigating the toughest challenges. Startups are full of highs and lows, but the best teams are forged in adversity. Hardship sharpens focus and drives hunger. Smart and curious people are vital, but the special talent that drives a company to success is grit and resilience.
Another key learning is the power of focus. In a high-growth startup, there are always distractions – things that break, new product ideas, revenue opportunities. But scaling successfully means having clarity on your competitive advantages and how those will compound over time, and staying laser-focused on the most important levers. For Raylo, these are derived from our objectives:
– Consistently improving unit economics through deep vertical integration.
– Developing a best-in-class risk and analytics platform.
– Delivering phenomenal customer experience.
Every quarter, we align our teams around these priorities through OKRs, ensuring disciplined execution.
Looking at the year ahead, our biggest focus is scaling Raylo Business – bringing our market-leading flexibility and low prices to small businesses. It’s a large, underserved market in the UK, and we’re excited about the opportunity. Additionally, we’re deepening partnerships with leading tech brands that see the subscription model as a key part of how consumers and businesses will access technology in the future.
Our journey is still in its early days, but the potential ahead is enormous. Raylo is not just about providing better access to technology – we’re building the infrastructure for a smarter, more sustainable way of consuming tech. And in doing so, we’re helping to shape a future where fewer products are manufactured, and those that are produced have longer, more meaningful life cycles.
