The consumer code breaker

How Vypr CEO Chris Williams is turning market research into a tech revolution

Hello Rainmakers,

You don’t have to look very far in the cities of England to find impressive tech companies that don’t make any money.

Maybe last week’s collapse and potential rebirth of Wakelet, like Huboo before it, stand as evidence.

But the question on my lips is always - what is the problem that this technology, and this business, is seeking to solve?

Maybe Manchester headquartered Vypr has the right combination, a corporate financier in the hot seat leading the funding rounds, a supportive financial backer, and the founder brewing the alchemy with the engineers.

Ladies and gentlemen, Chris Williams.

Chris Williams

When Chris Williams talks about consumer insights, he doesn't just speak in numbers—he speaks in human impulses. His journey from corporate finance number-cruncher to tech innovator is a neat tale about entrepreneurial transformation.

Sat in the ground floor of his WeWork office building on Manchester’s John Dalton Street, he buzzes with the enthusiasm of someone who's cracked a complex code. And in many ways, he has. As CEO of Vypr, he's joined a platform that does something seemingly impossible: it reads the consumer mind faster than a corporate focus group can draft a questionnaire.

His origin story has some romance about it. Asked by his mates in the pub to talk about what he did, he was conscious they were running the kind of business he was advising, and he felt something of a now or never moment looming.

After cutting his teeth and gaining his professional qualifications at PwC, with colleagues Ed Brentnall and Catriona Laing, Williams co-founded Dow Schofield Watts' transaction services team in 2008—launching the business mere days before Lehman Brothers collapsed.

"We thought we were crazy," he recalls with a wry smile. "Turns out, timing is everything—and nothing."

That early baptism of fire taught Williams a crucial lesson: adaptability is the true currency of business. From transaction services, he stepped into the corporate world, first with Money Plus Group, guiding it through the treacherous waters of FCA authorisation when the regulator was all over the debt advisory market, then to LMS, another private equity business, this one in the legal services sector. Each role was a stepping stone, each one a compass point in his corporate navigation journey.

We’re here to mainly talk through the successful fundraise which includes £4m from specialist venture investor YFM Equity Partners, which invests in high-growth businesses across the UK, and £1m from other investors and management. It brings Vypr’s funding to date to £13.4m with YFM’s total investment standing at £9.5m.