Ben Towers

Ben Towers is inspirational business speaker, Founder of Happl and one of ‘the most influential entrepreneurs on the planet’ whilst still only being 25 years old.

He started in business aged 11 and has since successfully exited his marketing agency, invested in disruptive start-ups and advised Governments & PLCs.

Ben is now the Founder of Happl – an employee engagement platform managing benefits, recognition and rewards for start-ups across the world. He was one of the youngest founders to get investment from Y-Combinator at the start of 2022.

When Ben Towers was 11 years old a family friend challenged him to build them a website. Having had no experience in business or creating websites Ben set out to learn how to develop a site by using videos on YouTube. Once the site was built Ben was given £50 to say thank you for the work he had done, this led to him looking to find more ways to build websites for money. At this point, Ben was moving into secondary school and began juggling freelancing and school work at the same time. Following this, aged 13, Ben discovered he was running in a sense a business and so set about creating Towers Design.

Initially building websites, Towers Design quickly grew due to his hard-work and perseverance to offer a wider range of services. Ben began to outsource some of the work to freelancers who could deliver the projects whilst he was at school. With time Ben grew with confidence and began to get a large amount of national press coverage for being so young and successful. Ben’s parents, Helen and Trevor, are both not in business and so all support and guidance for the company came from online, networking and his gut feeling. Towers Design began to employ freelancers full time but still working from home whilst also adjusting to focus more on social media marketing. This led to Ben being able to work on some amazing campaigns for brands like Amazon Echo, Pot Noodle and NHS Give Blood. Once Ben had finished his GCSE exams he quickly moved the Towers Design team into an office so they could all be together and focussing on the business growth and clients. To get around still being in education full-time Ben became the first ever person to employ himself as an apprentice.

Thanks to Ben’s quick success and age he was asked to appear on a number of TV shows to share his journey and knowledge whilst also speak at conferences across the world about his story. Along with the business, this helped Ben start to make a large amount of money which meant that he could start to invest in other disruptive businesses to grow his portfolio.

In April 2017 Ben carried out a “multi-million-pound” merger with Zest The Agency and Towers Design thus making one the largest marketing agencies in Kent. Ben was then under contract to carry out the merger and in September 2017 exited from the business.

Ben is now focussing a lot more in his public speaking, consultancy (using the experience he has from delivering marketing campaigns for brands like Champneys, Mazars and the Government), investments and launching his new business.

SPEAKING TOPICS

Ben Towers is a master at engaging mass audiences of people around a chosen topic. Combining innovative ideas and amusing anecdotes to create a world-class session for your audience. Ben can confidently deliver sessions on a variety of topics from entrepreneurship to tech-for-good to looking to the future as a young person.