James: Our Enterprise Experience

Posted on: 1 January 2026 in Enterprise

Harker began as an idea shaped by real-world experience and a desire to make meaningful change in the charity sector. Developed within the supportive environment of the University of Liverpool, the platform is now live—designed to help charities measure impact, not profit. In this piece, the founder shares the journey of turning a university-born concept into a scalable solution.

My journey with Harker began almost five years ago, not long after I went to my first lecture at the University of Liverpool, amidst the middle of the pandemic. Unlike many student entrepreneurs, I arrived at University already running a business: Jamescape, a tech consultancy. Through this work, I ended up supporting a homelessness charity in the South East of England, the York Road Project. Whilst supporting them, I saw the sorry state of the charity software: charities were relegated to “second-hand software”, built for businesses and bodged to work for charities, at extraordinary cost.

As a computer scientist with the skills to fix this problem, surrounded by fellow students keen to make an impact in the world, I quickly realised that I was in the perfect place to solve this problem: I was in an environment that fostered people to challenge the status quo and, as a student, the consequence of everything going wrong was quite low.

I naïvely allocated a £10K budget to Project Harker (a figure I wish covered my monthly payroll now), and began planning, then building, the first solution designed from the ground up to measure impact, not profit, for homelessness charities. The project progressed, with countless changes, and new team members (mostly from my cohort at University) joining along the way.

Running a business can be a challenging and lonely journey, but the Enterprise team in the Careers department made that much less so. Through their incredible support, the LCR Founders scheme, Design Your Future, the Enterprise Fund, and their truly unrelenting cheerleading for their students, I’d challenge you to find a better University to start a business while studying at.

A few years, and countless rewrites later, we proudly launched Harker into the world a few weeks back. We are incredibly excited to see the transformative impact our work will bring to the people supporting some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Whilst we embark on the next stage of our journey, selling our product and raising investment to take it to the next level, I am very grateful to have the Enterprise team still behind me, rooting and advocating for us at every opportunity. At Harker, we exist because charities deserve better, and the University of Liverpool has played a huge part in making that a reality.

If you’re a current University of Liverpool student, I can’t recommend enough getting involved with the Careers and Employability team and the Enterprise & Entrepreneurship team — especially through the new Sir Peter Rigby Centre for Enterprise. There’s fantastic work happening across the University, and these are the people who’ll help you connect with like-minded innovators and the right people to start your business.

Read the full feature in the magazine here: https://fdd4381ab0b54b01bcbed836ed0b4f8c.elf.site