‘I created a company worth seven figures from just a tweet’

Ryan Williams combined his love for sports and computers and accidentally transformed his life

Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email
Have you made your first million and want to share your story? Get in touch at [email protected]
Not many people can pinpoint the exact moment their life changed, but Ryan T. Williams has a screenshot of his. In 2013, up late at night with his firstborn, the 35-year-old discovered the world of sports Twitter, now called X.
“I was up late, fascinated by this Twitter world and also watching Sky Sports, when I had my eureka moment,” he recalls.
“I’m a big football fan and I started thinking, what if Twitter had existed in the 90s?”
So he tweeted an old sports headline, about Newcastle signing Alan Shearer, from an account he called Slow Sports News. Within four months he had 50,000 followers, and from here, his creation snowballed.
“I never set out to make money, it was a hobby,” Williams admits. He had always loved computers, and worked in IT for Manchester Metropolitan University, describing himself as “the mechanic that didn’t get oil on his hands”. But he had never been academic, failing business studies in school.
Twitter, which was founded in 2006, was taking off and parody and entertainment accounts were gathering huge followings. Steven Barlett’s social media marketing agency, Social Chain, had been created in 2013 and LadBible, which shares news and entertainment and is now a listed company, was started with one Facebook post the year before.
Williams’s baby daughter continued to struggle with her sleeping and feeding – they later discovered she had a milk intolerance – so he was up for much of the night with her. Twitter became an “escape” for him and his posts garnered more and more traction.
He would time posting old headlines to coincide with upcoming sporting events, so viewers believed them to be current. “When Ronaldo was leaving to go to Real Madrid, I posted that he’d renewed his contract but used an article from two years before – people got really excited,” he recalls. “It tricked viewers in a ‘Ah gotcha’ kind of way and friends would tag each other to catch them out too.”
Social Chain and LadBible tried to recruit Williams, but he was happy working his day job and having Twitter as his hobby. “Back then, social media was more of an unknown world,” he says. “You couldn’t imagine ever working in it, it’s come so far in ten years.”
Then he started to earn money from his posts after being approached by betting firms Betfair and Ladbrokes, which used his accounts to promote their deals. Williams explains that, back then, “you could get people to sign up to these deals and you got a cut every time there was a sign-up. I was earning £400 a deal. It became a side hustle”.
In 2015, he set up another parody account called Deluded Brendan, imitating the then-Liverpool manager Brendan Rogers, “who was getting mocked constantly” at the time.
The account racked up 350,000 followers in its peak and in total Williams was making roughly £3,000 a month.
He met his two business partners through his social media network, and a year later, they combined their followers, bringing it to a total of 2m. But doing both jobs was becoming too much and Williams knew he had a decision to make.
Sick of the nine-to-five grind, Williams fancied being his own boss, so he could be there to pick his daughter up from nursery. “We had a child and a mortgage, I was working in the public sector at Manchester Metropolitan University. I had great working hours, a pension – it was a cushty gig. But my heart was taken by social media and I had this urge to go for it.”. In 2016, Williams left his job.
The trio quickly realised that the sports side of things would only take the business so far, so they created a page called “It’s Gone Viral”, which also served as the company’s name. “It’s like the ‘You’ve Been Framed’ of social media,” says Williams. “Cats, dogs, kids, grandma falling over, these are the videos we were sharing.”
They monetised it with Google ads, allowing them to hire more staff, and the page “exploded”, gaining 4m followers. At this point, Facebook also added adverts to videos.
“We were getting millions and millions of views so our earnings shot up. That’s when we started to head towards a turnover of £1m.”
Despite his professional success, Williams’s personal life suffered along the way. “When the business was at its biggest, our marriage was at its lowest.”
He struggled to find a work-life balance, and admits it became an “obsession”. He’d leave the office early to pick up his children, but was constantly checking his phone or jumping on his laptop as soon as they arrived home.
“I’d stepped away from my IT job because I wanted to be present for my first daughter and my family and then I got consumed by this big beast, which made me absent,” he says.
He recalls a family holiday when his wife Jenna asked him to leave his phone at home. “By day two I was having withdrawal symptoms. I took our youngest to bed for a nap, then logged into my emails on the kids’ iPad. When Jenna walked in I threw it across the room.”
By the end of 2021, his role had changed significantly. “I was a director, doing appraisals and board or strategy meetings – these weren’t things I enjoyed. I loved the early days when everything was hands on and we only had three or four staff.”
Social media consumption had soared during the pandemic, boosting their pages’ followings by hundreds of thousands. In 2022, Williams and one of the original three co-founders decided to exit, after what he describes as a “jaw-dropping” business valuation.
“From something I started tweeting in 2013 to a seven-figure deal, I couldn’t believe it.”
Despite the dramatic shift in the family’s finances, their lifestyle has remained similar, as they are not “materialistic”, he says. Now mortgage-free, they’ve focused on giving the children “memories” by enjoying meals out and holidays – from Lapland to Disney World – treating them to first class. They are jetting off to the Maldives in February.
“We’re down-to-earth, normal people. We weren’t born with this money. We live in the same house we’ve always lived in,” he says. “The Channel 5 programme Rich House Poor House got in touch but they visited and said our house wasn’t big enough.
“Some people’s definition of success is a six-bedroom house with a pool, but we love where we live. We bought the house next door for my mother-in-law so the kids have grandma close,” he adds.
“I never started the business to make money – I don’t have a Ferrari or an Aston Martin. I wanted to have a better way of life. I wanted to be able to pick my daughter up from nursery and to go on holidays [whenever], rather than be confined to 28 days a year.”
Since leaving the business, Williams has found a better work-life balance, but hasn’t returned to a nine-to-five.
“I made millions, and in theory I never have to work again, but entrepreneurs never stop!” he says. “I still need a purpose and I’m trying to make a difference and leave a legacy.”
Williams has now turned his hand to the realm of online safety, and has created courses for parents. “My daughter is in secondary school and she’s on Snapchat all the time. This technology is moving so fast and schools aren’t equipped to keep up with it.
“I was nowhere near ready for the golf course!” he adds.
He and his wife have also co-written a book, Blood, Sweat and Tweets, about their joint journey with the business. He credits her with getting him to where he is today.
“Jenna has always been in the background, never public facing, but I wouldn’t have been able to do any of it without her.”
Copy link
twitter
facebook
whatsapp
email