10 - Alumni Spotlight: Tom Livesey & Eliot Brooks
Tom Livesey (Class of 2007) and Eliot Brooks (Class of 2009), co-founded Thriva in 2015, a health tech company which supplies at-home finger prick blood tests to help people measure things like cholesterol and hormone levels. They chat to us about what inspired them to set up the business and what challenges they’ve faced along the way.
What has been your biggest challenge since starting the business? Tom: There have been so many big challenges over the years! I think the biggest ongoing challenge is the fact
that we’re trying to drive a big shift in the way people think about their health and how they act. This means we’ve had to do a lot of work to help people and businesses understand how we see the future and how it will be different to today. Eliot: In June 2020 we began working with the Department of Health to explore how a remote mass testing service could be stood up for Covid-19 antibodies to sit alongside the home PCR testing service the government deployed. We successfully secured a contract to deliver this end-to-end testing service and had to build the operations, integrations and technical service in just four weeks to deliver 10,000 tests a day. It was
a huge team effort full of logistics, regulatory and technical challenges, working in close collaboration with the government. Somehow, we managed to get it done through relentless, collaborative work and went on to deliver the service successfully.
What three key skills/ attributes would you say you need to be an entrepreneur? Tom: I believe there are three main character traits you need to be a successful entrepreneur. 1. Resilience - there’s no two ways about it, building a business is hard. It can be a bit of a rollercoaster with at times seemingly insurmountable challenges. The resilience to manage these peaks and troughs and keep pushing forward regardless is important. 2. Passion - related to resilience, unless you’re passionate and truly care about the mission, your team, and your customers, it’s going to be really hard to stay motivated.
Tom in Lower School
Eliot in the Sixth Form
3. Humility - the media has created the idea that successful leaders are big personalities who are always right. This just isn’t the case. Often the best leaders are those who surround themselves with the best people, actively listen to others, and are acutely aware of their own strengths and weaknesses.