When I was at Reigate Grammar School, I studied Maths, Physics and Economics. Maths taught me how to solve problems, Physics taught me how things work, and Adam Smith taught me that if you're the boss, you pay other people to do the things you don't want to do yourself.

Looking back, one of the first times I realised I was interested in business was during Industry Week. We were asked to come up with a business idea, and mine was called "Google Maps Taxis" - which, in hindsight, was basically Uber, just with a much worse name. I remember my teacher telling me it was a good idea but a little far-fetched. I didn't agree with her, but the project definitely lit a fire in me.

Unfortunately, the day was somewhat overshadowed by my business partner accidentally engraving the concert hall piano with a Stanley knife while cutting out flyers for our pitch. So that probably got more attention than the business plan.

After school, I worked first as an oil broker at Tradition Securities and Futures and then as a commercial manager at Progressive. The City taught me a lot - long hours, high stress and an unhealthy lifestyle. Most importantly, it taught me that I didn't want to spend the next decade sitting in an office working for somebody else.

In 2022, I took some time out to travel. Travelling without an itinerary is, in my experience, one of the best ways to clear your head. And a clear head brings clarity about what you actually want to do. For me, that was starting a business.

The idea for Mulligans came from my own experience getting into golf during Covid. There wasn't much else to do, so I started playing. Fairly early on, I played a round with a scratch golfer and was completely mesmerised by the shape of his shots and the sound the ball made coming off the clubface. Naturally, I went home and ordered the exact same irons he was using from Golfbidder.

I quickly discovered that those clubs were absolutely not suited to a beginner golfer. When I tried to trade them in, I was offered a fraction of what I'd paid. So I listed them on eBay and immediately started getting questions like, "What's the shaft stiffness?" and "Are they standard lie?" As a beginner, I had absolutely no idea what any of that meant. That's when it struck me that there was a gap in the market for a dedicated platform to buy and sell golf equipment.

The first thing I did was speak to friends working at companies like Deloitte and ask how the businesses they'd advised had got started. The answers were fairly consistent: outsource technical expertise where it makes sense, don't overspend early, hire smart and focus on getting a product into people's hands. When you're following a path that's worked for other successful companies, it gives you some confidence that you might not be completely mad.

Building Mulligans has been exciting, but the biggest challenges haven't been the big strategic decisions. They've been the countless little things that, in your head, should be easy to fix but somehow aren't. Things like Google deciding to block your emails because your company's IP address isn't "warmed up", or Evri being unable to determine whether a single golf club in a box is a medium parcel or a large parcel. What you learn very quickly is that businesses are made up of hundreds of tiny cogs and every single one of them matters.

What makes Mulligans different is that we've built a guided marketplace. Our AI assistant, CHIP, recommends clubs based on your ability level and helps users identify fair prices. We're trying to make golf more accessible, help people get better value, and educate them about the game at the same time.

We deliberately launched in the UK because it's the market we know best, but over the next few years we'd love to expand into the United States and Japan. Ultimately, I hope Mulligans helps people play better golf and enjoy the game more. I know it would have helped me enormously when I was starting out.

As for what keeps me motivated, if we're successful enough, I might one day be able to afford to send my own kids to Reigate Grammar School. I certainly didn't appreciate the opportunity enough when I was there -hopefully they will.

Haydn's Top Tip

If I could leave you with one piece of advice for turning an idea into a successful venture, it would be this: utilise AI while it's still cheap.