Resilience Is a Muscle, Not an Organ: How Every Crisis Made Space for Something Better

"Bad often leads to good." Twenty years of building companies, and every single crisis (redundancy, recession, pandemic) has taught me the same thing. Resilience isn't something you have or you don't. You build it. And the only way to build it is by going through things you'd rather not go through.

The First Lesson: PwC Redundancy (2002)

I was 22, working as an IT consultant at PwC. The dot-com crash was hitting hard, and PwC was being packaged up to sell to IBM. They didn't need duplicate teams. The conversation was straightforward: "We don't need you anymore."

I'd worked hard to get that job. Multiple interview rounds, all the tests. Eighteen months later, I was out. It wasn't great. Nobody wants to be told they're not needed.

To be honest, I was okay at that job, not brilliant. I probably never would have left on my own. But with the redundancy money, plus what I'd saved from living with my parents and being away on client sites constantly, I had a deposit for a flat in Balham. This was just after 9/11, when everyone was saying "leave the cities." But I knew London, especially South London. It would be fine.

That flat became everything. Years later, when I had to live on nothing whilst starting ScreenCloud, having somewhere to live cheaply that made it possible. The redundancy forced me out, and that space allowed Codegent to start.

The Agency Years: Financial Crisis (2008-2009)

2007 was brilliant for Codegent. We were doing really well. Then Lehman Brothers collapsed. At first, we thought we might be alright. We weren't.

By 2009, it properly hit us. Client budgets disappeared. Our biggest project (Teachers TV, a government digital education platform with six people working full-time) cancelled overnight. Then we discovered our bookkeeper had been stealing from us. Great timing.

We had to let people go. But the App Store had just launched. Whilst the economy was shrinking, we asked ourselves a different question: are we really dependent on that small percentage that's disappearing, or can we work with what's still there?

We took our Bangkok team (six developers who suddenly had no client work) and gave them six months to learn mobile development. The plan was simple: build our own products and break even within a year.

We did it. Those products ended up generating millions in revenue. Most of that team is still with us at ScreenCloud. The financial crisis didn't create the opportunity, as mobile was happening anyway. But it gave us the push to see it.

The Education in Failure: Tepilo (2009-2018)

Tepilo started badly and got worse. We repositioned it as an online estate agency, merged with an existing agency, and raised our first proper funding. From completely the wrong investor.

They pushed us to spend on their media channels. The board didn't work. We weren't investing properly in product or spending sensibly on marketing. David and I could see where this was going.

In 2018, they pushed us out before what was supposed to be a £100 million merger and flotation. We negotiated a small payout. It was probably the only money anyone saw from that whole thing.

The Sarah Beeny partnership taught me something important: she was brilliant at PR; I knew nothing about PR. The mistake wasn't the partnership. It was not staying in our lanes. Be good at what you're good at. Let others be good at what they're good at.

But whilst Tepilo was failing, I'd already started working on ScreenCloud. One thing closing, another opening.

The Breaking Point: Burnout to ScreenCloud (2015)

The first year of ScreenCloud was brutal. Six or seven days a week, long days, every day. We had barely any angel capital and needed to hit $10,000 monthly recurring revenue to survive.

There was one day where I just broke. Proper exhaustion. Not dramatic, I just couldn't do it anymore. My co-founders were worried but there wasn't much they could do. I was handling all the business operations whilst we put every penny into development.

The work wasn't particularly hard intellectually. It was just relentless. Task after task after task, late into every night.

I got myself together, started exercising again (that's when the Bodypump thing started), and learned to manage my energy better. That burnout taught me what unsustainable actually looks like. It forced me to build proper systems, delegate, and structure the company properly.

I had to break before I could build it right.

The Ultimate Test: COVID and Tech Recession (2020-2023)

February 2020: our best month ever. Company doubling year-on-year. March 2020: lockdown.

ScreenCloud's entire business (screens in physical spaces) suddenly had no physical spaces. Customers started cancelling. It was like watching something you've built for years just disappear.

We made a decision to proactively credit customers who weren't getting value. It helped keep relationships but destroyed our revenue. We cut salaries, moved people to four-day weeks. We didn't lay anyone off, but it was hard.

What saved us was that our enterprise customers, especially in manufacturing and logistics, suddenly needed us more than ever. Their frontline workers were now essential workers who needed communication tools. We found our real customer base during the worst possible time.

We only dropped 8% in revenue. Then, just as we got through COVID, the tech recession hit. We watched as the SaaS world went mad with valuations, and we weren't part of it.

We tried to raise. We got term sheets, but they were terrible. So we did something different: we became profitable. That defensive move ended up positioning us perfectly for the exit.

The Pattern Recognition

Somewhere between Brexit (2016) and COVID (2020), I stopped being surprised by crisis. Brexit temporarily killed UK angel investment overnight. COVID killed our business model. The tech recession killed our fundraising plans.

Each time the approach was the same: protect the team, do right by customers, position for what comes next.

The companies that raised too much or couldn't adapt disappeared. When big changes happen, if you can adapt quickly, there's usually opportunity.

The Muscle, Not the Organ

Children aren't born resilient. I wasn't born resilient. You build it through experience, through getting back up when you'd rather not.

But resilience isn't permanent. It's not something you just have. It's like fitness. You have to maintain it. And the training ground is always situations you wouldn't choose.

I've been through enough crises now that I know what to do. I don't enjoy it, but I've got decent at it. I always assume something's coming. Not paranoid, just realistic. Run a company for twenty years, you'll hit multiple crises. They come round every five to ten years.

What I'd Tell 2002 Mark

"This redundancy might be the best thing that happens to you. But not automatically. You have to actually do something with it."

Because that's what crisis does. It creates space. Uncomfortable space, but space nonetheless.

The redundancy created space for Codegent. The financial crisis created space for products. Tepilo's failure created space for ScreenCloud. Burnout created space for building properly. COVID created space for profitability.

The Truth About Smooth Sailing

Do I prefer things going well? Obviously. But smooth sailing for decades doesn't really happen when you're building companies.

My family has watched me go through these cycles. They see the struggle more than the pattern. But I've noticed something: the worst moments, when everything feels like it's falling apart, are often right before things change.

Not because of karma or anything like that. But because crisis forces decisions you wouldn't otherwise make. It strips away what doesn't matter and shows you what does.

The Uncomfortable Truth

I wish I could say it gets easier. It doesn't. Each crisis still feels like a crisis. Each failure still isn't fun. The only difference is that now, in the middle of it, part of me knows this is probably making space for something else.

Bad often leads to good. Not always, not automatically, but often enough that it's worth remembering when things are bad.

It's not fun. It never gets fun. But it does get familiar.

If you're in the middle of something difficult right now, know this: it's probably making space for something. The question is what you'll do with that space.