LONDON, 12 March 2016 - BullionVault founder and CEO Paul Tustain is profiled today in The Sunday Times' business section.
Speaking to the 'How I Made It' team at the UK's best-selling 'quality' Sunday paper – now with a circulation of 800,000 each weekend – Paul recounts his early career as a computer scientist, how he came to develop the idea for BullionVault over a decade ago, and the problems he faced raising finance to launch it in 2005.
"Gordon Brown was selling gold [from the UK's national reserves]," Paul explains. "So I knew it was time for me to buy."
But "as a retail buyer," The Sunday Times says, "Tustain had found it hard to break into a market dominated by banks and other institutions. He decided to fix that by starting his own precious metals exchange."
Rather than turning to bank loans or venture capitalists, Paul raised £275,000 from 30 family members and angel investors, launching a business which today cares for clients' gold worth more than $1.3bn – equal to 11% of the UK Treasury's current bullion reserves, according to The Sunday Times – and which made a pre-tax profit of £3.9m in 2015 on sales of £375m.
Now launching WhislyInvestDirect – his third start-up business of the last 25 years – "I would happily be a poor entrepreneur rather than a wealthy employee," says Paul.
Times subscribers can read his full story here:
