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I quit my six-figure job to start a business – despite the gloom

Jeremy Weil quits his role at The Economist to focus on his coloring book start-up – Paul Grover for The Telegraph

I have wanted to run my own business for as long as I can remember. Even at the age of five, I was printing little fake business cards with “consultant” on them. But while I’ve invested in or attempted to create start-ups over the past fifteen years, with varying degrees of success, I’ve always had to balance my passion for entrepreneurship with the demands of a full-time job. function.

That is so far. It has taken time away from the office to fully commit to Color Your Streets, the start-up I founded a year ago with my wife, broadcaster Emma Barnett. To do this, I’m leaving a six-figure job at The Economist’s intelligence unit, where I was head of product. Before that I worked for Reed Business Information and Deloitte, among others.

People say Britain isn’t great for entrepreneurship anymore, but that hasn’t been my experience – although there are some things I haven’t tried to do, like raising money. What I can say is that there have been very few barriers to getting started, and there are so many fantastic tools available.

I had to quit my job because what started as a spark of an idea had turned into a full-time job in itself.

In 2023, Emma and I were on shared maternity and paternity leave. Our five-year-old had developed a love of coloring books and to keep him busy we wanted to find one that would allow him to color in pictures of the local area: Herne Hill in South London. We were surprised to find that such a thing didn’t exist, so we set out to make our own.

Richmond coloring book
Jeremy Weil started Color Your Streets so his five-year-old could color photos of his surroundings – Color Your Streets

At the time, there was no expectation that this idea would eventually take over our lives. I started by taking some photos of the neighborhood on my phone and then used AI to generate book templates. I had a first attempt at getting a book printed, but I didn’t know anything about paper quality or anything like that at the time.

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Still, it was exciting to see the idea come to life for just over a few hundred pounds.

We don’t use AI anymore – these days we work with a handful of designers – but it has been a brilliant and effective tool from the very beginning. You can ask him to suggest a color palette for a kid-oriented brand and he will give you great suggestions. This was especially helpful because I am color blind.

I was convinced we were onto something special. We created a second series of books, expanding the areas we covered, and started showing them to friends and their children. There was an immediate positive response, especially among the children. When you show something to a five- or six-year-old, you know immediately whether he or she likes it or not. They don’t hide their reactions – they are cruel. It was interesting to see how immediately they felt connected to their area, its buildings and landmarks, even to things as simple and modest as a bench they had sat on outside the station. It meant so much more to them than something generic.

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