The Entrepreneur Experiment

Mark Hughes started Solidroad in Dublin in 2023 with his co founder Patrick Finlay.

There was just one problem.

They did not actually know what they were going to build.

Three years later, Solidroad has gone through Y Combinator, built offices in Dublin and San Francisco, landed major enterprise customers and raised a $25 million Series A.

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Mark breaks down exactly how it happened.

We go inside the early search for product market fit, how they got their first customers, founder led sales, getting into Y Combinator after multiple attempts, moving his life to San Francisco and the extraordinary speed at which Silicon Valley operates.

Mark also tells the story of meeting First Round Capital on a Saturday, meeting the partnership on Sunday and effectively having the investment agreed by Monday.

We then get into AI.

Mark explains how AI has completely changed the way he works as a CEO, why he believes repetitive work is most at risk, why customer support will remain a combination of humans and AI, and how he is effectively building an AI powered operating system around his company.

Finally, we talk about the biggest mistake he has made building Solidroad and the lesson he would give his younger founder self:

Move faster.

A fascinating conversation about ambition, fundraising, sales, AI, Silicon Valley and what it really takes to build a venture scale company.
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CHAPTERS

00:00 Meet Mark Hughes and Solidroad

01:52 From Dublin startup to a $25M Series A

03:09 Why Mark became a second time founder

04:30 Starting a company without knowing what to build

06:01 How they searched for the right problem

07:49 The moment they realised they had something

09:09 Funding the company before Y Combinator

11:39 Revenue as the North Star

15:01 Why timing matters in startups

17:00 How Solidroad found its first customers

19:37 Mark's founder led sales playbook

24:28 Why moving to San Francisco changed everything

24:59 What Y Combinator actually does

26:33 Inside a typical week at YC

28:31 Getting into YC after multiple attempts

31:24 The personal cost of moving to San Francisco

34:38 What happens after Y Combinator

36:22 Inside YC Demo Day

37:27 Meeting First Round Capital

38:50 Saturday meeting, Monday money

39:53 Building a $6.5M seed round

42:10 Landing major enterprise customers

42:49 Why money raised is the wrong success metric

43:10 Why Solidroad raised again

44:56 Will AI take our jobs?

46:30 Why customer service will remain human

48:56 The jobs most exposed to AI

49:40 How an AI powered CEO works

52:42 Has Claude overtaken ChatGPT?

54:04 Raising the $25M Series A

59:05 Mark's advice for founders raising money

1:00:41 Dublin versus San Francisco

1:02:52 What comes next for Solidroad

1:03:59 Mark's biggest mistake

1:07:02 Quick fire

1:10:22 Why face to face sales will win in an AI world

1:13:37 The advice Mark wishes he had earlier

1:14:08 Speed is everything

Sara Davies built the business that changed her life.

Then she had to fight to save it.

In this episode of The Entrepreneur Experiment, Sara tells the story of what happened when Crafter’s Companion, the company she founded from her bedroom, ran into serious trouble and ultimately entered administration.

She talks candidly about buying the business back, the brutal 18 months that followed, and what it feels like when the company that has defined so much of your life suddenly becomes the source of enormous pressure.

This is not simply a story about business recovery.

We talk about the decisions and warning signs that founders can miss when a company is growing, including the uncomfortable reality of doing around £20 million in revenue while struggling for cash.

Sara also opens up about stepping away from Dragons’ Den, the pressure of trying to be a founder, investor, television personality and mother at the same time, and reaching the point where she knew something had to change.

We explore ADHD, hyperfocus, motherhood, guilt, resilience, investing and the psychology that has allowed Sara to keep moving forward through some of the most difficult periods of her career.

In this conversation:

• What really happened inside Crafter’s Companion

• How a business can generate huge revenue and still run into cash problems

• Why Sara decided to buy her company back

• The toughest 18 months of her business career

• The founder mistakes she can now see more clearly

• Why she stepped back from Dragons’ Den

• The pressure of combining ambition, business and family

• Sara’s experience of ADHD and hyperfocus

• How she evaluates entrepreneurs and investments

• What difficult periods have taught her about resilience

This is a very different side of Sara Davies.

It is a conversation about what happens when success becomes complicated, when the business you built needs saving, and how you rebuild both the company and the founder behind it.

The Entrepreneur Experiment is about one central idea:

Build a better founder, not just a better business.

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James Haskell has spent most of his life performing under pressure.

He won 77 caps for England, toured with the British & Irish Lions, played professional rugby around the world and then had to figure out who he was when the game stopped.

Today, James is an entrepreneur, broadcaster, author, DJ and co-host of The Good, The Bad & The Rugby. He’s also building Blackeye Spirits alongside Mike Tindall and Alex Payne.

But this isn’t really an episode about rugby.

It’s about building a better founder, not just a better business.

We talk about why self-awareness may be the ultimate competitive advantage, how elite sport teaches you to handle brutal feedback, why ambitious people struggle to recognise when enough is enough, and how James rebuilt his identity after rugby.

We also get into focus, saying no, buying back your time, therapy, accountability, personal branding, choosing business opportunities, the creator economy, why information is becoming free and why implementation is becoming more valuable.

James is candid, funny and completely unfiltered throughout.

If you’re ambitious, stretched across too many things, or trying to work out what success actually means to you, there’s a lot in this one.

In This Episode

We cover:

What professional sport teaches you about business

Why “you can lie to everyone else, but you can’t lie to yourself”

How to receive feedback without letting your ego get in the way

The four things James believes you can actually control

Why achievement can leave high performers permanently unfulfilled

The difference between chasing outcomes and mastering process

What Eddie Jones taught him about excellence

Reinventing yourself when your first career ends

Why James started preparing for life after rugby at 20

Learning to say no to opportunities

How he decides which businesses and projects deserve his time

Why he refuses most equity-only deals

Authenticity, personal branding and protecting audience trust

Why information is becoming free but implementation will remain valuable

Therapy, mental performance and changing your emotional state

His approach to focus, batching and avoiding distraction

Why even a former professional athlete pays someone to keep him accountable

Buying back your time

Defining how much money is actually “enough”

Turning The Good, The Bad & The Rugby from a podcast into a media business

Why modern podcasts need to think beyond audio

Building Blackeye Spirits and the mission behind the Blackeye Rugby Fund

Links & Resources

James Haskell: official site covering his rugby, books, music and other projects. James Haskell official website (https://jameshaskell.com/)

The Good, The Bad & The Rugby: James hosts alongside Mike Tindall and Alex Payne; the show describes itself as the world’s biggest rugby podcast. The Good, The Bad & The Rugby (https://goodbadrugby.com/)

Blackeye Spirits: James, Mike Tindall and Alex Payne’s spirits business. The brand says its Rugby Fund aims to eventually invest £1 million annually supporting injured players, research, risk reduction and recovery.
Blackeye Spirits (https://blackeyespirits.com/

James’s books: What A Flanker, Ruck Me and Approach (With)out Caution are all featured on his official site.

This is one of the most personal founder stories we’ve recorded on The Entrepreneur Experiment.
Danny Buckley is the co-founder of ADHD Now and a 2026 EY Entrepreneur of the Year finalist.
But the company exists because of a far more personal story.
Danny spent much of his life struggling with distraction, emotional dysregulation, anxiety and a lack of structure without understanding why.
His wife Simone believed he had ADHD. Danny dismissed it.
Then life changed completely.
After years of serious health challenges, Simone became critically ill. The day before she died, she told Danny that life was short, that he needed to stop inflicting suffering on himself, get help for his ADHD, understand who he was and back himself.
Danny eventually followed her advice.
His diagnosis at 32 gave him a new understanding of himself, but getting there exposed another problem: accessing ADHD assessment and support was extraordinarily difficult.
Danny saw an opportunity to change that.
Together with his co-founders, he built ADHD Now around a simple idea: people should be able to get answers in weeks rather than wait years.
We unpack how they found clinical capacity, built the technology and processes, generated demand, scaled the team and created a service that expects to see 13,000 patients in 2026.
But this conversation goes far beyond business.
Danny speaks openly about grief, becoming emotionally available for his son, sobriety, faith, asking for help and learning to live with structure and discipline.
We also explore why ADHD appears so frequently among entrepreneurs, how hyperfocus can become both an advantage and a liability, and why Danny eventually had to recognise that not every exciting business opportunity deserved his attention.
His personal framework is beautifully simple: desire, hard work and help.
And each morning, he returns to his Three Cs:
Connection. Compassion. Contribution.
This is a story about what happens when you finally understand yourself, accept what you cannot control and put your energy into what you can.
As Danny puts it:
“Life is short. Enjoy the life you’ve left.”
IN THIS EPISODE
Danny’s experience of living with undiagnosed ADHD
The final conversation with his wife Simone that changed the direction of his life
Why he travelled to the UK to receive his ADHD diagnosis
How diagnosis brought structure, discipline and emotional awareness into his life
Why getting a diagnosis is only the beginning
Turning his own experience into the idea for ADHD Now
The stranger Danny met outside the hospital who would later back the business
How ADHD Now went from idea to launch in a matter of months
Recruiting clinicians when the healthcare system was already at capacity
Using technology and systems to reduce friction for patients
Why private providers may form part of the solution to healthcare waiting lists
The relationship between ADHD, hyperfocus and entrepreneurship
Why Danny bought two bakeries while scaling a healthcare company
Learning when ADHD-driven curiosity becomes distraction
Danny’s formula of desire, hard work and help
His Three Cs: Connection, Compassion and Contribution
The moment at EY Entrepreneur of the Year when Danny finally felt proud of himself
Why he rejects the idea that founders have to be miserable to succeed
Faith, fatherhood and redefining what success means
Why “action removes anxiety”
Our Sponsors:
Nostra: https://bit.ly/nostra26
Azure Communications: https://bit.ly/azure26
🔗 Links & Resources:
ADHD Now: https://adhdnow.com/ie
Danny Buckley on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danibuckley90
Danny Buckley on LinkedIn: https://ie.linkedin.com/in/danny-buckley-84840b2a0
Book recommendation – Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: https://amzn.to/4dshO2a
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Podcast: https://www.mrgaryfox.com/podcast

Building a trusted brand rarely comes from one viral moment. It comes from showing up consistently, solving real problems and earning people’s attention over time.
In this Mentor Moment, Laura Dowling shares how she built credibility by making complex health information easier to understand and creating content that genuinely helped her audience.
It’s a valuable lesson for any founder or creator trying to grow a brand: trust compounds, consistency matters and meaningful impact will always outlast a temporary spike in views.
🎧 Listen back to Laura’s full conversation in Episode 466 of The Entrepreneur Experiment for more on her journey from pharmacist to educator, entrepreneur and trusted voice in women’s health.
Follow and subscribe so you never miss a Mentor Moment.
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