Born in Huddersfield and raised in Northumberland, Sir Richard Harpin’s entrepreneurial career began at the age of six. After several ventures, including a fly-tie fishing company that gave him enough for a deposit on his first house, Harpin tried his hand at a “normal” day job. But the ideas kept coming, and in 1993 he started what would become his most successful venture: HomeServe.

The business began life as a straightforward emergency plumbing service in a joint venture with South Staffordshire Water. It was a choppy start: within a year, the business had burned through £500,000 and was down to its last £10,000. Then Harpin heard that Surrey's Sutton Water was selling plumbing insurance. He copied and improved the model, rolling it out to other water companies and expanding into more services and abroad. Steady growth followed, and HomeServe listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2004 before joining the FTSE 100 in 2020.

In 2023, Harpin completed the sale of HomeServe to Brookfield Infrastructure Partners for £4.1bn, marking one of the largest UK take-private deals of its time.

Harpin is now sending the elevator back down by helping mid-sized businesses to scale into large enterprises through his investment vehicle Growth Partner. He is also the owner of Business Leader, acquiring the brand in 2023 to support this mission through media, events, coaching and peer groups for founders and CEOs.