Stella Smith
Stella Smith is the founder of fintech start-up pirkx – a disruptive force in the UK’s employee benefits industry providing benefits for individuals in order to extend their income spending potential and enhance their health and financial well-being. Prior to pirkx, she had a senior financial services career holding several posts across financial markets. She sits across a number of boards as a non-exec or trustee and has various private investment interests. In her spare time, she enjoys art, music, property, travel, and spending time with her wonderful baby daughter at her home in Covent Garden, London.
What were your initial years of growing up like? Tell us about your life before the venture/ corporate journey?
I don’t come from a particularly monied background; I didn’t go to university or do A-levels, I left school with GCSEs and worked in McDonald’s full-time. I then found a position at Midland Bank, Twickenham and had an accelerated career full of fun and adventure.
Every industry that is now a large-scale, top-notch business once started as a small idea in the minds of entrepreneurs. What was that idea or motivation that made you start your business/initiative? What motivated you within to say “YES, go for it!”
pirkx was created out of a need for fairer access to wellbeing benefits for all. I noticed this disparity back when I owned a number of small businesses and wanted to provide my workers with the same sorts of employee benefits packages that I had been given access to when I worked for large organisations. However, whilst trying to find these sorts of resources, I noticed that due to the relatively small buying power of my team I could access none. Recognising this injustice and realising the sustainable commercial opportunity, pirkx was created in order to aggregate all workers who were not supported through employment by large organisations and thus ensure that everybody was able to access affordable support.
Tell us something about your initiative or current role. What is it about, and what impact are you trying to make?
The pirkx mission is to positively impact one million lives by 2025. We plan to do this by utilising our technology to make wellbeing benefits an accessible resource for as many people as we can. Costing only £4.50 a month, a pirkx membership gives you access to a 24/7 private doctor, counsellor, virtual gym classes, legal advice, shopping discounts and much more. It is through providing these vital resources as affordably as we can that we will be able to support a large community of individuals who until now had been left entirely unsupported.
Your journey and your vision are very inspiring, but are there any achievements or accomplishments you would like to mention?
Through the hard work of the pirkx team, we have managed to achieve several significant accomplishments over the past year. To begin with, we have now expanded into Australia, with our Australia MD, Siobhan Whalley, doing an incredible job directing the overseas development. As well as this, we have now initiated our expansion into South Africa, which we plan to launch this year.
More recently, we have also seen our headcount triple, with development within our Sales, Technology and Customer Support teams, and even the creation of our first ever Marketing department!
Since the New Year, we have also signed the lease on our first ever office, which means we will have a brand-new headquarters in Covent Garden. Renovations to the space have now begun and we cannot wait to move in and get started with our next adventure.
Would you like to share with our young budding women entrepreneurs the change you would like to see in the world if given an opportunity?
I believe access to affordable healthcare and wellbeing benefits should be a fundamental human right. I would like to see a world where everybody across the globe is able to access this. I am fortunate enough to be in a position where I believe I can make this change a reality. If the pirkx team continues to grow and develop at the pace with which we currently are, we believe we will be able to deliver our mission of positively impacting one million lives by 2025.
Women are a growing force in the workplaces worldwide, standing shoulder to shoulder with their male counterparts. There are cracks in glass ceilings everywhere, with many women breaking through to carve out a space right at the top of the pyramid. What are your thoughts about women’s leadership today?
Firstly, I would like to express that I do not see myself as a female leader, rather, I simply see myself as a leader. I think it is important that everybody has the ability to reach and demonstrate their full potential and capabilities.
There are a lot of amazing leading women out there achieving incredible things at the moment and we are fortunate enough to bear witness to a wide breadth of female success. Female leadership has come a long way and thus it is important to celebrate those who have proven, regardless of gender, that if you can dream it, you are already halfway there – so dream big.
What would you want to say to our young women leaders/audience reading this?
Nothing is impossible. As previously mentioned, dream big because if you can dream it, then you have probably already done more than most other people. As I often like to ask my team, if you could wave a magic wand and see yourself in five years, where would you want to be? Where would you like to live? How much would you like to be earning? Once you have figured that out it is really just a matter of working backwards. Absolutely everything can be broken down into manageable steps, so articulate your goal and then take it step by step, operating with kindness along the way – I believe good things come to those who practice kindness.