Originally, my whole focus growing up was sport. I genuinely thought I was going to the Olympics and become a professional badminton player for Great Britain. That was my entire world. I went to university to study law alongside that, and over time I realized the badminton career might not have been as illustrious as I’d imagined.

I shifted my focus to law, but because of my sporting background my aim was always to combine it with sport in some way. I started out working for a sports agency that represented footballers and Olympic athletes, which was my first taste of the legal industry and its application to a specific vertical. I quickly realized through training at that firm that I didn’t just enjoy giving the advice, but also working closely with management teams, taking a holistic approach and actually being involved in business decisions, not just legal advice.

That led me in-house, working primarily for technology companies. Even though my background was in sport and law, I had a real affinity with tech businesses – the culture, the focus on innovation and constant improvement felt very similar to elite sport. Over time, I developed a bit of an entrepreneurial bug, and I was constantly writing ideas down in a little black book. Many of those ideas were completely irrelevant. But that mindset eventually led me to Summize.

The idea for Summize came from a very real frustration. One of the companies I worked at was being sold, and I was responsible for reviewing contracts to identify risk before the transaction. I was literally printing contracts out and highlighting them by hand.

It felt like such an obvious use case for technology, but initially I dismissed it. I thought the problem was too specific to me and that nobody else would understand it, but it wouldn’t go away. The more I thought about it, the more I realized this was a shared pain for in-house legal teams everywhere.

That was the moment where it became more than just an idea. I’d worked with David Smith, Summize’s now Chief Development Officer, and trusted his technical judgment, so I started talking to him about the problem and whether it was something technology really could solve. Those early conversations quickly turned into working sessions, meeting up at the Birchwood Starbucks (our first office) and exploring what might be possible.

Once we started building prototypes and saw that this could actually work, it gave us the confidence to pursue it properly. It wasn’t about building a huge company at that stage – it was about solving a problem that genuinely mattered.

My role has changed significantly as we’ve scaled, but today I see it as setting the vision, the mission for the business and our contract lifecycle management (CLM) solution. I probably underestimated early on how important it is for people to feel a sense of purpose and direction, so a big part of my role now is making sure the team understands where we’re going and how we plan to get there.

I also spend a lot of time on hiring. We learned early on that one poor hire – especially in leadership – can have a huge impact on the culture and how the business operates. Making sure we bring in the right people, especially at senior levels, is something I’m very focused on.

Day to day, my role varies. I stay very close to customers, prospects and the product itself. I started Summize because I was obsessed with solving a specific problem, and that hasn’t changed. Being involved in the product, listening to customers and staying close to the market is still a core part of how I operate.