I survived a heart attack and lost seven stone - now I want to make my Leeds firm a $1bn business
After losing seven stone following a heart attack, serial entrepreneur Martin Port has big ambitions to build his latest Yorkshire business into a $1bn unicorn. He speaks to Chris Burn.
From conducting auctions at 11, bunking off school to selling business cards as a teenager and running a New York pretzel shop in his twenties, Martin Port’s varied career as an entrepreneur has been a truly lifelong endeavour.
Now 64, Port has dramatically slimmed down recently after a heart attack but his appetite for founding and growing businesses remains undimmed – and he is determined to make his latest venture his most successful yet.
Port’s Leeds-based company Build Concierge uses AI to help growing home and trade service businesses improve their engagement with customers through a platform to manage and automate calls, chats, WhatsApp, SMS, emails, and bookings in real time.
The recently-formed business raised £3.8m in seed funding from private investors last year, valuing the start-up at £35m.
Port says it already has approaching 40 staff based at Thorpe Park on the outskirts of Leeds and is drawing millions in annual recurring revenue (ARR). He has his sights set on building the business to a $1bn (£740m) valuation – giving it much sought-after ‘unicorn’ status.
“Typically our customer would be a £5m to £10 million turnover business, they could be a drainage company, a plumbing company, an electrical contracting company, any type of construction or service-type business, even plant hire,” he explains.
“It's all about delivering return on investment and improving customer service. Our customers are not techies, they're people that started on the tools, so they don't have big IT departments and we're providing this managed service.
"Within five years, we want to be at maybe £50 million ARR and we want to be making something like 30 per cent EBITDA, so about £15 million profit. I've never done it before but I'd love to be able to create a unicorn.
“It is very doable. But sometimes you have to take a step back and say, "Oh, we're only a few months old and you have to keep going back to the foundations, making sure things are in place, don't over-trade, and don't take too much business on you can't support’.”
He admits he was a “foodaholic” prior to a heart attack in late 2023 which prompted a huge lifestyle change in which he has prioritised a healthy diet and regular exercise, resulting in him losing seven stone. Port also made the decision to move from Leeds to live in Tel Aviv last year, prompted in part by “a level of toxicity” in the UK towards Jewish people.
He says the heart attack gave him a fresh perspective on life, while the time difference between Israel and the UK has also helped his new-found focus on his health.
"I used to work ridiculous, crazy hours. I also used to always judge people the amount of hours they worked. As I've got a bit older, I’ve got a bit smarter, and realised thatr if I didn't make myself healthy, I wouldn't be here. So literally, from getting that shock wake-up call, I have lost shed seven stone with no intervention.
"I don’t eat processed food, and I wake up every morning and go to the gym. The benefit of being in Israel is that it's two hours ahead, so I can do the things you want to do before 11am and then go to work, which is 9am in the UK.”
Port’s passion for business has been a lifelong enterprise – inspired by his entrepreneurial father.
"My dad started off as a market trader and then he went into auctions, and then he got into buying businesses. It wasn't a conventional family background. The conversation was never about education or how you're doing at school. It was all about work. I remember the house being a makeshift warehouse, where we'd have to have to get through the boxes to get out the front door.
"With the auctions, my father used to book large hotel rooms and advertise televisions for £5 and all different types of goods in the local paper in places like Glasgow and London. He’d pack the room and it was a bit of theatre really. I’d ask him at the end of the day if I could go 12 minutes on the rostrum with the gavel and I used to try and emulate him.”
As a teenager, Port and a friend started selling business cards and would skip school a day each week to travel around the North finding customers.
In his 20s, he moved to New York and initially found work selling fresh bread to famous restaurants and hotels and subsequently opened a pretzel store as a minority partner in the shop.
He returned to the UK where he set up a bakery business which he ran until his mid-30s before moving into technology. Port went onto establish a vehicle tracking technology business called Masternaut in 2002. It was eventually sold in 2011 as part of a £60m deal.
“Some people do it very early but my first business of real enterprise value started when I was 40. I’d had this business education for more than 20 years and I built Masternaut up over nine years having started it from scratch and we eventually sold that for £60m.”
It inspired his next business, workforce management platform BigChange, which went from an initial £3m valuation in 2013 to being worth £100m in 2021, when US private equity firm Great Hill Partners made a £75m investment in the company.
Three years later, BigChange was acquired by field service management firm Simpro Group in a deal valuing it at £330m.
Port says he is particularly proud to have created more than 1,000 jobs across his different businesses.
“It's all about giving people an opportunity. I think if I've given someone an opportunity and they've achieved something afterwards, then it makes it all the greater.”
Port admits that Build Concierge is unlikely to be his final venture.
"I don’t think it’ll be the last one, knowing me. But we’ve got a good four, five, six years ahead before we have the next chapter.”