Name: Shane Miller-Bourke,
Job title: Co-founder and co-CEO at Spring
What I do: I’m the co-CEO of Spring alongside Samar Shaheryar, whom you interviewed a few months ago. We’re the UK’s leading part-exchange/home buying company. My responsibility is to ensure we have the right expertise (i.e. people), technology and financing to buy and sell hundreds of properties every year.
Why I got into the property industry: There’s a great quote about the automotive industry from EB White (author of Stuart Little and Charlotte’s Web) – “Everything in life is somewhere else, and you get there in a car”. But most of that life goes on in buildings – the vast majority of people work in one, rest in another and play in a few more.
How I did it: My friend and co-founder of Spring, Cormac Henderson, hooked me in. He was running a small part-exchange company called National Property Trade. I invested with him and when that proved successful, I launched a fund to help him expand his business. Over time I gradually got more and more involved in the operational side of things and, once I’d learned enough to be useful, I left my trading job and we founded Spring.
My first proper job: I was an equity options trader at Barclays Capital for 12 years after I left university. I loved the job at first, and learned a huge amount in that time, and got to live in London, New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, but I am so much happier working in a small, innovative, company where you can make a real difference.
My first big break: I was a recent graduate desperately trying to get someone to give me the opportunity for a job in trading. The interview at Barclays, like many before it, was going ok at best, until we somehow got onto the subject of poker, which I’d probably spent more time playing than studying at university. The questions about GDP growth and bond duration stopped, discussion of pre-flop bets and calling check raises ensued, and an hour later I was hired.
My inspiration(s): My family. My mum is the hardest worker I’ve ever known, raising two boys in a London council flat on her own, both of whom turned out fine (well, my brother’s a great guy at least). My wife’s natural passion and brilliance mean I have to strive everyday just to keep up with her, and our three kids make it all worthwhile.
The biggest challenge I’ve encountered to date: I’ve recently been diagnosed with ADHD, which is often described as having a brain that is like a sports car with a faulty brake. I.e. there are both significant advantages and disadvantages to having it. Diagnosis in adulthood means I spent the first 40+ years of my life dealing with the challenges it poses, without knowing what they really were. Looking back, I think that battle has made me stronger and, if it was a choice, I’d choose to have it every time, but it was often really hard for both me and the people closest to me. With the diagnosis, I still have the advantages, but now have much better tools to handle the challenges, which has been close to life changing.
My greatest achievement/proudest moment to date: We have 30 people in the team at Spring, many of whom are also neuro-diverse. You don’t need a survey to know it, but our employee engagement surveys consistently show that the team is happy, engaged and 100% committed to what we are trying to do at Spring. It’s brilliant.
My biggest screw-up: Thinking I’ve already made my biggest mistake. I’ve made that one too many times to count.
The biggest misconception people have about the property industry: That it’s about buildings. It’s actually about people.
My biggest bugbear about the industry/the one thing I would change about the industry: How slow it can be to change, even when the need is obvious – it still takes over six months to sell a house in the UK, if it ever actually sells. I can’t complain too much, that’s part of the reason we have such a huge opportunity at Spring, but there is so much that could be done at policy level to drive investment and innovation.
Where I’d like to be in five years’ time career-wise: Watching on as the current generation of managers at Spring blossom into the leaders that take the company to the next level.
My main career goals right now: Developing the management team, and turning Spring into the platform that changes the way houses are bought and sold in the UK. Nobody should be wasting half a year waiting to make their move and get on with their lives.
Who I’d invite, living or dead, to a dinner party: Definitely a dead guy, just to freak everyone out.
What I do in my downtime: I’m a taxi driver, taking the kids from football, to fencing to climbing, to football.
The job I’d be doing if I was not doing this: Assuming I would be donated a few billion extra brain cells – theoretical physicist. Trying to figure out what this universe we live in is all about.
My advice for someone just starting out: You have no idea how much you don’t know. But other people have that knowledge, find them and ask them as many questions as they’ll answer.
My motto/mantra: Nothing ever goes to plan, how you adapt to the surprise is infinitely more important than the accuracy of your prediction.
