Back to Durham School: A Careers Talk on Becoming an Entrepreneur

An email arrived from Durham School, my old school, asking whether I would come back and give a careers talk. I said yes before I had worked out what to say. The talk is called Becoming an Entrepreneur, and it takes place on Wednesday 21 October at 9.00am in the school's Lecture Theatre. The school has announced it on Instagram, poster and all. So this post is the talk, more or less, written down in advance for the pupils who will be there, and for anyone wondering how a DNA jewellery brand came out of County Durham in the first place.

Why a Durham School careers talk mattered to me

When I left Durham School I had no fixed plan, only a feeling that I wanted to build something of my own. I went on to read Economics at Loughborough University, because I loved the subject at school, and in particular I loved the teachers who taught it. I graduated with a First in 2025, and the degree taught me to think about markets, pricing and risk in a way I still use every day.

So the thought of standing in front of pupils who are where I was not long ago feels odd and quite moving. However, it also makes the point of the talk clear. Nobody in that room needs to have it all worked out. I did not, and the company exists anyway. The OD after my name on the poster stands for Old Dunelmian, which is what the school calls a former pupil.

What DesigNA actually does

The first question will be the one everybody asks. What is DNA jewellery? In short, it is a one of one piece designed from your own DNA profile. You take a cheek swab at home. Then a UK laboratory with over 25 years in genetic testing reads 23 identity markers from the sample. Each marker becomes a coloured stone along the strand, in the exact order your DNA places it, with polished silver, gold or freshwater pearls holding the spaces between. Finally, a partner jeweller in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter strings the piece by hand, and it arrives with a signed certificate on top of the box.

The markers say who you are and nothing else. They carry no information about health or ancestry, which is usually the first thing a careful parent wants to know. How DesigNA works walks through the whole process, and the science page explains what the laboratory reads.

My favourite example always gets the biggest reaction. We once had an order for a pair of identical twins. Because identical twins share a DNA profile, their two pieces came out the same, which is the only case where that can ever happen. For everyone else, no two pieces will ever match. You can read more on that in our identical twins post.

From an idea to a company in Durham

The idea started with a question about personalisation. A jeweller can engrave a name for anyone, and millions of people share a birthstone. Nobody shares your DNA profile, so a piece designed from it exists once. That is the whole brand in two sentences, and it took a long time to find them.

DesigNA is a Durham company. Its registered office sits inside the Durham Genome Centre in Lanchester, and the brand was founded in Durham in 2025. Along the way Virgin StartUp granted us funding, which was a real milestone. It gave me the confidence that other people believed in the idea as much as I did. I wrote about the Durham side of the story in DNA jewellery from County Durham.

What running a small business is really like

This is the part pupils usually want most, so I will be honest. Running a small business means doing a bit of everything. I design the products, build the website, do the marketing, work with the laboratory and with the jewellers in Birmingham, and I still answer customer emails myself. Some weeks are mostly admin. Some weeks a photograph takes a whole day.

I have learnt far more from the things that went wrong than from the things that went right. For example, our first product photography was not good enough, and we reshot all of it. Our early website looked like every other shop, so we rebuilt it. None of that felt good at the time. However, each one made the next version better, and that is the only way I know of getting anywhere.

The advice I will give the room

I am keeping it to three things, because three is what anyone remembers from a careers talk.

First, you do not need to have it all worked out. Follow what you are curious about and let the plan come later. Second, start small. A real product in a few people's hands teaches you more than a year of planning. Third, ask for help from people who know more than you. You will be surprised how many doors open just because you asked. A laboratory, a jeweller and a funding body all said yes to DesigNA because somebody asked them.

Economics helped, but it was not the point. The subject gave me a way of thinking about price and risk. The actual work was learning to make a thing, sell it and fix it when it broke.

If you are in the room and want to see a piece

Everything I will describe is in the collection. The Silver DNA Profile Necklace, £249, is the piece I usually show first, because the pattern of stones along the sterling silver batons makes the idea obvious at a glance. Bracelets start at £179, and the gift page explains how the kit works as a present. Thank you to Durham School for the invitation. I will add a note here after the talk, and I expect the questions to be better than most I get from adults.

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