Doing a number on the modern business of work on your phone

oasting is a fairly widespread behavior amongst entrepreneurs, whereas the humble brag tends to be deployed by extra self-aware founders — or so I’ve present in the previous decade interviewing founders for this column.
George Lineker, against this, takes the reverse strategy. He sounds nearly sheepish about the success of his telecoms start-up. “It’s embarrassing how simple it is,” he laughs.
Lineker (sure, he’s former England soccer captain Gary’s son) is the co-founder of YourBusinessNumber, the place prospects pay £4.99 a month for a digital phone number used to contact purchasers through WhatsApp Business, with out the want for a second phone line.
“It works because it’s so easy,” he explains. “Customers put of their private number on our web site, obtain WhatsApp Business verification messages 30 seconds later, then have a second number, which forwards all messages onto their present number.
“We’ve stripped every thing out of a conventional phone number providing — knowledge, minutes, texts, apps. Our prospects can then use their new number for WhatsApp business throughout set hours, not be tied to their phone — they’ll take management of once they’re working, not being bombarded all the time.”
Lineker, 31, began the business two years in the past with tech entrepreneur Sebastian Lewis, 37 — they met over burgers and beer in the backyard of former Manchester United chief government Ed Woodward.
“I knew there was a market for second lines — you’d see people walking around with two phones; back in 2014 there were 14 million people with two phones — and I’d already tried building a business around a phone app that installed a second number on your phone,” Lineker explains.
“That idea didn’t work — too complicated. But then Meta launched WhatsApp business — meaning we’d have no need for serious tech, all privacy concerns would be dealt with by WhatsApp. We just had to provide an instant, cheap, second number that would be so useful to small firms and sole traders running their businesses on their phones.”
The duo pooled £5000 to construct their web site, then raised £150,000 on the SEIS scheme in January 2021; angel traders (together with father Gary, and Woodward) plus institutional backers have since injected nearly £800,000 in the business, giving it a £5.5 million valuation.
The agency now has 7000 prospects: initially they have been principally private trainers, hairdressers, electricians and different sole-traders, however bigger companies at the moment are shopping for as many as 500 numbers. “A lot of restaurant chains (who want every front-of-house manager to have a private number to deal with bookings), estate agencies — including Winkworth — and recruiters,” Lewis provides.
“We’re also getting nurses and doctors, who use WhatsApp to send scans and patient updates to colleagues and want to get it off their personal chat. We tried lobbying the NHS to admit the problem and start to use us, but they’ve spent huge amounts of money on their internal system and don’t want to admit no one is using it.”
WhatsApp is now the UK’s most-used messaging system: “Nobody wants to speak on the phone any more,” Lineker asserts. “I recently bought a house in London entirely on WhatsApp — the estate agent and solicitor both used WhatsApp business.”
The pair run their agency with a handful of workers and WeWork headquarters. “We’re the antithesis of the usual unicorn story,” Lineker asserts, “a small team and highly profitable business. The ideal exit would be someone like Vodafone being so sick of customers quitting their £60/month business phone contract and switching to us, that they come to us and buy their customers back [via acquisition]. That’s the dream.”
The duo are carefully watching WhatsApp’s proprietor’s plans for their very own growth. YourBusinessNumber already works worldwide, with the US its second-biggest market; the founders at the moment are plotting native pushes into Germany, Brazil and India.
Currently the agency’s churn — or number of prospects leaving the business — is a respectable 3%. “And most customers are locked in for as long as their business is running — they don’t want to have to start again with a new number,” Lewis provides. That’s helped revenues develop by a fifth month-on-month for the previous 12 months.
Marketing efforts have been helped by a sure Match of the Day presenter talking about his son’s business on social media — however George Lineker hits out at nepo-baby speak. “Sure, my dad having eight million followers on Twitter helps, however I consider you’ve bought to take benefit of what you possibly can.
“He wouldn’t make investments if he didn’t consider in YourBusinessNumber. It could be a easy thought, but it surely actually works.”