‘I gambled my last £10k to set up my company, and sold it for £4.1bn'

Telegraph

5 days ago

In this series, Telegraph Money speaks to millionaires to find out how they made their fortunes. How did you make your first million? If you'd like to share your story, email [e-mail]
Running rabbit kennels, selling conkers, becoming a magician: Richard Harpin's entrepreneurial prowess began in primary school, with each path yielding its own particular charm. 'I don't think I ever had a long-term plan other than: I do want to one day run my own proper business,' the 60-year-old reflects. 'I'm looking for that big idea.'
It's fair to say that he got there in the end (and then some), selling HomeServe, his home assistance service business, to a Canadian asset management firm for £4.1bn in 2023.
The sale has prompted the writing of his upcoming book, How to Make a Billion in Nine Steps. Part memoir, part business toolkit, it charts the wins and inevitable failures that made HomeServe a multi-billion pound British success story, and secured Harpin a spot on the Sunday Times Rich List with an estimated personal wealth of £700m.
Harpin never set out to make so much as £1m, he says. Born in Huddersfield and raised in Northumberland, business was just part of who he was. 'As a boy, I built businesses the way my school friends built Airfix kits,' he says. The most successful of these was a fly-tie fishing company he started in his teens, which had staff in Kenya and Newcastle, where Geordie housewives would package the goods. It gathered enough profit for a car and a 10pc deposit on his first house by the time he left university.
He later landed a graduate role at Procter & Gamble, working as a brand assistant for Fairy Liquid (the reason, he says, that his hands remain soft even now) – but doing a day job alone didn't cut it.
Harpin began shifting Christmas trees in pub car parks to make extra cash. Once other vendors who were paying rental rates realised he was selling his wares without such costs, however, they complained, and Harpin was left with a vast – and dying – inventory. 'I lost a couple of my selling sites and ended up with about 1,000 trees that I wasn't going to be able to sell, so I got up at 4am and sold them at the fruit and veg market every morning,' he says. 'I managed to get rid of every tree and worked so hard. [I] made no money that year, but [it was] a big learning point.'
Another would come a few years later. He had met Jeremy Middleton, who would become his business partner, at Procter & Gamble in the early 1980s, with the pair going on to start up a lettings agency, ironing service and decorating company along with a string of other ventures.
They egged each other on in search of the 'big idea' and undertaking the unusual strategy of attending prospective staff's homes to interview them, so they could eye up their kitchen table (with a view to choosing an employee based on one they wanted to work from).
Their first member of staff was hired on that basis; their weekly tête-à-têtes and meetings with prospective renters were held at that kitchen table, too.
Pivoting to property management gave Harpin his next step – a home repair and maintenance business, funded by his and Middleton's life savings. But trouble struck when FastFix (then renamed A1 FastFix, to get it to the top of the Yellow Pages) expanded.
They had secured investment from South Staffordshire Water. 'I thought that we'd get economies of scale and therefore the business would get to profit – it didn't,' Harpin says. 'The losses got bigger because it was the wrong model, so I became increasingly unconfident, and thinking: 'how am I going to find a way through this?''
The business lost half a million in its first year, leaving Harpin down to his last £10,000. Even Middleton told him: 'You've got to admit your life's dream of becoming a successful entrepreneur is over, you better go back and work for Procter & Gamble.'
He had other ideas. With that final chunk of cash, he devised a new company, inspired by the plumbing insurance cover he had seen offered by Sutton Waters, a water company in Surrey. He mailed an offer for an equivalent service to 1,000 of his customers, 38 of whom sent back a cheque for £50. 'That was the magic moment. I got on my desk in front of those 23 [staff] who thought they were going to lose their job,' he says. He told them: 'We made it.'
Harpin was convinced that if this take-up rate within 1,000 households could be replicated at scale across 100,000 households, the business could work millions of times over. By the end of the company's second year, it had more than 100,000 customers pumping turnover up to £3.67m, that first-year loss becoming a profit of £700,000. The following year, with an affinity partnership signed with Anglian Water, turnover had doubled, doubling again by the end of the 1997-98 financial year to £14m.
Harpin is loath to dwell on the negatives in his business past – which may well include the £30m fine HomeServe was issued by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) in 2014 for mis-selling insurance policies and failing to properly investigate complaints. 'Mistakes are fuel,' he believes. 'I'm resilient and determined, and I knew that I'd find a way through because that was my life's dream, and nobody was going to stop me.' According to Harpin, 50pc of entrepreneurs are struck by their big idea later in life, while '50pc of entrepreneurs are born entrepreneurs, and that was definitely me'.
That hardwired drive explains why Harpin isn't sitting back and enjoying the spoils of his sale. He stayed on for two years as non-executive chairman of HomeServe (he says sacking himself as CEO was 'the best business decision I ever made'); has invested £150m of his own cash into different ventures – including a Yorkshire pub, and Checkatrade. He's also acquired a business magazine and podcast, written a 25-year business outline (HomeServe's chairman told him: 'I don't know of anybody else in the whole world that, after they've just sold the business, would have then written a career plan for the next 25 years'), and written the book.
He is also on a mission to double the number of large companies in the UK, which he believes is a vital step in stimulating the economy.
Taking his foot off the pedal is clearly not on the cards for Harpin, who was a major Conservative party donor until earlier this year (he'd given the party more than £3.5m since 2010; Rishi Sunak used Harpin's helicopter for campaign stops ahead of last year's election).
He will not be spending his days troubling local golf courses or seeking out 'sun-drenched tax exile,' but instead splits his time between homes in Marylebone and a property close to York, spending non-work hours on pursuits like half marathons and triathlons with his children, skiing, and going on a selection of bucket list holidays.
I ask Harpin what the word 'retirement' means to him. 'Death,' comes the response. 'The day that I die will be the day that I've retired.'
'How to Make a Billion in Nine Steps' is out now.