From benefits to a £10m exit: How Sam Stoffel built – and nearly derailed – his business

Sam Stoffel studied film at Leeds university but always had an itch to become an entrepreneur.

After graduating, he found himself broke and living on benefits, so he began searching for a viable business idea. In his desperation to raise some cash, he discovered "matched betting" – a method of taking advantage of the free bets offered by gambling sites to attract new customers. When executed correctly, the system can be used to generate consistent returns.

Stoffel wasn’t the first to spot the opportunity. However, he believed the existing websites in the space were doing a "terrible job”, with poor marketing and a weak customer experience.

So he decided to copy and pivot: take the core idea and improve the model. Profit Accumulator was born in 2014.

In this latest episode of the Business Leader Podcast, Stoffel tells Sir Richard Harpin how he grew the company over a decade to a £10m exit – all without external investment.

Along the way, he learned several important lessons.

One of the simplest ways to boost profits and accelerate growth, he says, is to raise prices. Founders must make an objective assessment of what their service is worth and not be afraid to recognise they deliver value to customers.

But there were missteps too. In 2022, he and his team rebranded the company as Outplayed. Although he preferred the new name, changing it while the company was still scaling proved costly.

“We disappeared off Google overnight because all of our domain authority vanished,” Stoffel recalls. The impact became clearl only gradually: customer acquisition slowed as fewer people discovered the business online. With natural churn continuing, customer numbers began to fall.

Stoffel eventually concluded the rebrand was a mistake driven by "shiny object syndrome" – the entrepreneurial tendency to chase new ideas for their own sake.

The same impulse led him to develop a computer game in partnerships with a social media influencer. The plan was to make money through in-game purchases. But a fundamental flaw soon emerged: the influencer’s audience consisted largely of children who could not afford to buy virtual products.

At one point, Outplayed also faced a liquidity crisis – and Stoffel learned another valuable lesson. Don’t tie up too much capital in illiquid assets such as property, he advises. Always maintain accessible cash reserves.

The business ultimately recovered and grew once more. Stoffel exited Outplayed in October 2024. He found that imposing a strict deadline on the buyer – linked to a potential announcement in the Budget on Capital Gains tax – focused minds during the negotiations. Creating urgency, he says, can be a powerful tool in closing a deal.

It didn’t take Stoffel long to start again. He celebrated the sale for around 15 minutes, he says, before turning his attention to what to do next.

Today, he runs SubSpot, which aims to be the “Shopify for subscription businesses", taking advantage of the rise of entrepreneurs and side hustlers generating recurring revenue. This time, he believes, the opportunity is far bigger.

"The reason I sold Outplayed,” says Stoffel, “is that [despite being a] great business, I felt like there was a ceiling there – it's never going to be a billion-pound business. But SubSpot is infinitely scalable.”