Hermione Way is a tech entrepreneur and journalist with over 20 years in the global startup ecosystem. She founded her first company at age 20 without any business knowledge, launching Newspepper.com - a digital media studio that quickly attracted clients like BBC, Facebook and PayPal. From there she catapulted into the epicentre of Silicon Valley, interviewing founders like Mark Zuckerberg, Brian Chesky and Travis Kalanick long before their companies became global giants. Hermione went on to co-found Vibease, the world’s first smart vibrator, scaling it to $1.5M in sales, later serving as Head of European Communications at Tinder. Today she co-runs Innovation Labs - a multi-location innovation hub supporting hundreds of UK startups. Her signature strength is fearless momentum: taking risks, jumping into opportunities and proving that with a laptop and an internet connection, anyone can build something extraordinary.

In this session, Hermione offers an honest and energetic look into the reality of building companies from scratch - without money, without knowledge and without permission. She shares how she “jumped out of the airplane and built the parachute on the way down,” and why resilience, risk-taking and relentless action matter far more than degrees or perfect plans. Hermione breaks down the psychology behind starting a business, why most people never take the first step, and how to turn a single paying client into real momentum. She explains how to handle fear, embrace failure, use worst-case-scenario thinking, network authentically and build opportunities. She also reveals the challenges entrepreneurs don’t talk about: sustaining businesses long-term, balancing creativity with structure and knowing when to bring in people who stabilise what you’ve started.