Richard Harpin Keynote Speaker

Sir Richard Harpin is one of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs and a leading voice on how mid-size businesses scale to become big, enduring companies.

Born and raised in Yorkshire, Richard showed an entrepreneurial streak early. By the age of six he was already trading, and as a teenager he built and sold a fly-fishing tackle business that paid for his first car and the deposit on his first home.

After graduating from the University of York and spending several years at Procter & Gamble, he co-founded HomeServe in 1993 with a £50,000 investment and a simple idea: make home repairs easier and more reliable for customers. Over the next three decades, HomeServe grew into a FTSE-250 company serving millions of customers worldwide, before being sold in 2023 for £4.1 billion.

Following that sale, Richard stepped back from day-to-day corporate leadership to focus on what he believes is the UK’s biggest economic opportunity: helping more mid-size businesses scale successfully.

Today, his work centres on two platforms:

Through Business Leader, Richard supports founders and CEOs running businesses typically turning over £3m+ in revenue. Business Leader provides structure, peer learning, and practical insight for leaders navigating the difficult jump from founder-led growth to professional scale.

Alongside this, he backs and mentors ambitious businesses through Growth Partner, an investment and support platform focused on long-term value creation rather than short-term financial engineering. His approach combines capital, coaching, and pattern recognition drawn from decades of experience.

Richard is also a regular columnist for The Sunday Times, where he writes about entrepreneurship, leadership, productivity, and the structural changes needed to help Britain build more large, resilient companies. His writing is grounded in lived experience rather than theory, often drawing lessons from mistakes as much as successes.

Richard is a member of the NatWest Mid-Market Council, a senior advisory group bringing together experienced entrepreneurs and business leaders to help inform how Britain better supports mid-size companies — the part of the economy that employs millions and drives long-term growth.

In 2025, Richard became a Sunday Times bestselling author with his book How to Make a Billion in 9 Steps, which distils over 30 years of building, scaling, and exiting businesses into a clear, practical framework for entrepreneurs.

He is a highly sought-after speaker and has delivered keynotes and talks at leading business events including Elite Business Live, The Business Show, and Festival of Entrepreneurs, where he is known for presenting his 9 Steps for Building a Billion Pound Business.

In 2025 Richard was awarded a knighthood, becoming Sir Richard Harpin.