Why we built Northbrik
The founder
Northbrik was founded by Joseph Robinson, our director. Joseph has been coding since he was 14. He failed his GCSEs, went to university anyway, and came out with a BSc in Computer Science. He started a Masters in Software Engineering, then dropped out midway through his studies. With how fast AI is progressing, he could not see the value of the degree. The lesson stuck: the qualification on paper matters less than what you can actually build.
The problem
Every freelancer and small agency has the same bottleneck. The work is good, the websites get built, but finding the next client eats the week. Cold outreach is slow, ads are expensive, and sales teams are out of reach for a one-person studio.
What we did about it
We built our own AI tool to find and qualify local businesses that need a website. Then Joseph hired his friend Harvey as our first caller, real conversations, not a call centre, using what the AI surfaced to bring in clients. It worked well enough that we now offer both to other freelancers and agencies: use our AI in your own pipeline, or hire our callers to fill your calendar.
Where we are now
We registered in April and made almost £1,000 in revenue in our first months of trading. We are not going to pretend that is a rocket ship. But every pound of it came from a real local business that needed work done, found through our own tools and our own calls. That is the engine we are scaling, and it is the same engine we sell.