Ben Smollan

1. 

   08

   Vital

   The one to focus on

   Software that keeps licensed workers' credentials compliant

   May 2026 – Present

   

   I'm currently building software to help businesses employing licensed workers automate the management of their credentials. With automatic chase down emails, AI verification and information compiled into dashboards, the software streamlines and reduces risk of compliance issues falling through the cracks. I have a major second phase to this business that will be executed in addition once I've built a large database.

   Placeholder: what the guide says about Vital.

   • The problem

     £60k. The maximum penalty for illegal working, per worker. Then add lost contracts and failed client audits.

     Any business that puts workers on other people's sites (staffing, field marketing, care, security, logistics) has to hold current documents for every one of them: right-to-work evidence, DBS checks, driving licences, medicals, training certificates. Each expires on its own schedule. Most teams track them in spreadsheets, chase by email, and keep PDFs in arbitrary folders. As a result, expensive mistakes can fall through the cracks.

   • The product

     

     • Collect

       From the worker's phone. Each worker gets a secure, expiring link to upload documents and licences.

     • Verify

       Read by an API. AI extracts the fields and cross-checks name, licence number, issuing body and expiry against what the worker typed. Confident matches auto-approve; anything uncertain goes to a human.

     • Monitor

       It chases for you. Every credential carries a live status: valid, expiring or expired. Workers are reminded at customisable intervals automatically, based on the timelines for different licence renewals.

     • Prove

       Compliance on demand. One click produces a date-stamped PDF of a worker's full history. A REST API lets scheduling and HR systems block non-compliant workers from shifts.

   • How it's built

     Every table is scoped to one tenant.

     Next.js 15 on Vercel's London region. Neon Postgres in the EU/UK with row-level security enforced on every table, and tenant isolation checked with live cross-tenant probes. Documents sit in Cloudflare R2 behind short-lived presigned URLs, never in the database.

   • Where it goes

     • Phase 1 · now

       Get agencies onto Vital, their workforces into the system and build a large database of workers requiring licensing.

     • Phase 2

       Once a substantial number of people have been brought onto the platform, phase two will commence. A marketplace will be established where workers maintain ownership of their data, and are connected with compliance officers.

   • Built month by month

     • 19 May

       First commit of what became Vital. Next.js, Clerk auth, Neon Postgres, PDF generation. Five fixes on day one just to get the build green.

     • 1 July

       Forced row-level security. Every worker, credential and dashboard query is scoped by agency.

     • 23 July

       Import any spreadsheet. Mapped import for XLSX or CSV in any layout. Auto-send is off on import, so a bad file can't email a whole roster.

     • 27 July

       CredChain → Vital. The old name collided with another company in the same industry. I renamed it everywhere in one pass.

     • 31 July

       Moved to vitalcheck.co.uk. I verified it end to end and revoked every link on the old domain.

     • 19 August

       Rebuilt the visual identity around security printing, taking cues from the print techniques used on documents that are meant to be hard to fake.

     • September

       Two hardening passes: audit trail, security headers, an audit-log viewer, a CI gate, AI verification injection, CSV injection, header safety. All 19 dependency advisories patched, 11 of them high.

   • What it taught me

     Be ready to constantly pivot. During our time building Origin Studios, we were constantly pivoting our platforms, business model, products and strategy based on market changes and new learnings. Now building Vital, I've had to adapt to a completely different model after figuring out what my current one really looks like.

   • See it live

     

     vitalcheck.co.uk ↗

   Open the full project
2. 

   07

   Origin Studios

   A D&D studio, co-founded with my brother · closed

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   A D&D studio I co-founded with my brother. Three one-shots, four business models, 90 customers, over £1,000 in revenue and millions of Instagram views with leading influencers in the space. We built a strong community, and I learnt an immense amount from this.

   My first real business venture.

   • A Disconnected Generation - Our Why

     A generation raised on screens reconnected.

     We built fast paced, interactive adventures to engage a younger audience: competitive, with overlapping stories, and easy for the DM to run without hours of prep.

   • The work

     The grind behind our adventures

   • International events hosted

     

     We contacted university D&D clubs one by one, to host events where students played our adventures. We did this not only to build a larger community, but also to get feedback to further improve our adventures.

   • The adventures

     

     • The Midnight Masquerade

       The adventure that started it all. A completely new format of D&D where we introduced competitive D&D.

     • The Lantern Keeper

       Our second adventure, focused on story building and character arcs.

     • The Greedy Fountain

       A small, intro adventure we trialed.

   • How the model changed

     • An Etsy shop.

       We started out on Etsy, planning to sell adventures on there.

     • Interactive campaigns.

       We made our first major pivot, to differentiate from competitors. We built our own Shopify to host interactive adventures, and website to sell them off of.

     • From subscription to one-off payment

       Originally, we planned to offer a subscription where an adventure would be released each month along with smaller pieces along the way. However, we eventually realised the market was far more receptive to a one-off payment for each adventure.

     • The Companion

       The last thing we did before closing was work on a companion app to improve D&D for not only the players but the Dungeon Master as well. Through secret player to player chats, and automation of processes, the goal was to streamline the gameplay. However we struggled to gain traction.

   • How we grew it

     

     Largely through social media and affiliate deals, as well as email marketing, we marketed our products.

     • Social Media

       

       Millions of Instagram views, organic

     • Affiliate Deals

       

       We collaborated with a number of influencers, the biggest being Deck of DM Things, a leading creator in the space with close to 1 million followers across platforms.

     • Cold Emailing

       

       Hundreds of cold emails. Before AI automation, each done by hand. I learnt to customize emails to the recipient to gain a higher success rate.

   • The launch

     The pinging Shopify notification of our first sale is a moment I'll never forget.

     • 1 July

       Launched The Midnight Masquerade and The Lantern Keeper.

     • Result

       90 customers and over £1,000 in revenue.

   • The team

     

     Me - Co-Founder

     • Liam

       

       Liam - Co-Founder

     • Komon Hayashi joined

       

       Another friend joined the business, and was crucial in helping us continue to grow our Social Media.

   • Learnings

     • Total Addressable Market.

       The D&D market is relatively small which made scaling difficult. Additionally, we found it very antagonistic to monetisation despite our genuine mission.

     • Wily Resourcefulness.

       I learnt there is always a way to do something. Outside of school, there isn't a set answer or method. With enough persistence and wily resourcefulness, almost anything can be achieved.

     • Grit.

       Origin Studios was my first real startup. It was a rude awakening to how much work is truly required to build a company. It was something I knew, but never truly understood until I actually spent the long hours for months on end working. Being able to push past the initial novelty of a new idea and actually execute it is where I developed the most.

     • Shopify

       I was head of the technical workflows and backend of our site. I learnt advanced skills in backend frameworks, A/B split testing and integrations.

   • How it ended

     Due to other commitments questioning our future potential, we decided to close Origin Studios. However, I learnt more in that year about building a business than I had in the rest of my life.

   Open the full project
3. 

   Development Dashboard

   A clickable prototype for planning staff development

   2026

   

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   • The employee's view

     

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   • The manager's view

     

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Early Hustles

Origami, keyboards, a car wash, sneakers

2015 – 2023

1. Lemonade, books and origami

   My first hustles

   2015 – 2018

   Age 6–9 (2015–18). Origami sold to my class in grade 3.

2. 

   Keyboard Kid

   Custom keyboards, built and sold at 11

   Age 11

   

   At 11, I loved building keyboards. So I turned it into a business where I sold custom, high quality keyboards.

   I pitched a product for the first time. And had two customers ultimately.

   • The setup

     

     Each keyboard took around 10 hours to build.

   • The Pitch

     

     With just a slideshow, I presented the different parts of a keyboard and why it was worth purchasing a custom one.

3. The car wash

   Flyers, door knocking and my first cold outreach

   2023

   Grade 9, age 14. Ran a car wash business. I designed and put flyers through doors all over the neighbourhood and knocked on doors myself to find clients. It was my first cold outreach, and although the business itself wasn't that successful, it taught me to overcome my fear and relentlessly pitch.

4. 

   Sneaker Flipping

   Buying, revamping and reselling sneakers

   2023

   

   2023. Buying and reselling sneakers, and learning what margin, demand and timing actually mean. From getting scammed, banned on different platforms, and struggling to break even, to testing ways to revamp shoes to increase my margin, this was another learning.

   I lost a lot of money here :(

   • Revamping

     

     It was important to try and find shoes that I could increase the value of significantly by giving them a clean and doing some treatments for creases.

   • Sourcing the Shoes

     

     Buying and reselling sneakers, and learning what margin, demand and timing actually mean.

I've always been passionate about designing solutions to problems. When I see an issue, I think of a better way to do it, and then I make it.

1. 

   05

   Meritus

   A 3D strategy game: guide Rome from 509 to 27 BC

   2026 – Present

   

   A turn-based strategy game where you guide Rome from 509 to 27 BC by feeding it ideas ahead of their time. An AI reads each idea; a deterministic engine decides what Rome can actually build.

   This is my game: you whisper ideas to Rome, and see if it can build them.

   • Why I built it

     It started chatting with a friend about the best advancement to take back in time to conquer the world. I was so eager to explore this further. I wanted a way to go back in time and test out what would happen if you gave ancient Rome, sanitation and artillery, or a small empire that was otherwise crushed. So I built it.

   • The idea

     

     You are the unseen hand behind the Roman Republic. Type any idea to your court, from "make the river work for us" to "a printing press". It is weighed against what Rome actually knew that year, and knowing an idea is not the same as being able to build it: every advance needs materials, skilled people and acceptance first.

   • Rome governs itself

     Each turn is a consular year. The real consuls come from the Fasti, the Senate is filled by the great families, and famous figures arrive on cue, unless your changes alter history.

   • A city you can walk into

     

     Zoom from the map to the whole city, down to the street and inside its buildings. Rome in 50 BC has 160 dated monuments and 20,000 buildings inside the walls, and the city fills with races, triumphs and the Senate in session as the game's events happen.

   • The races

     

     The Circus Maximus during the Roman Games: four teams, seven laps, watched from the stone seats.

   • 509 BC and 44 BC

     

     The same view of Rome at the start of the Republic and at its end: the city grows year by year, and every monument appears in the year it was built.

   • Every fact sourced

     Each historical fact names where it comes from (Livy, Polybius, Platner and Ashby's topographical dictionary), and disputed facts are marked as disputed.

   • How it's built

     A Python engine that decides everything and replays any game exactly, and a 3D client in Godot. About 82,000 lines of code and 230 recorded design decisions so far.

   Open the full project See my code on GitHub ↗
2. 

   Space Competition 2025

   Designing a space base, from a hand sketch to a 3D model

   2025

   

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   • The sketch

     

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   • The 3D model

     

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   • The base

     

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3. 

   Recording Arm

   Designed and built over six months to light and timelapse my art

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   I wanted something to light and timelapse my art as I did it. So I designed and built a solution over the course of 6 months.

   • The build

     

4. 

   Remote Control Cars

   FPV cameras and an IR lap timer

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   Installing FPV capabilities and an IR system to measure lap times.

   • On video

     

5. 

   Working Centaur Costume

   A Halloween costume with moving back legs

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   A Halloween costume with moving back legs.

   • The build

     

6. 

   Hamster Cage

   A proper enclosure, built instead of bought

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   When I got a hamster, I had two choices. A cheap, tiny cage that would be cruel to the hamster. Or spend hundreds of pounds on an expensive, beautiful enclosure. I didn't like these options, so I built one myself.

1. 

   03

   The Novella

   A 20,000+ word novella

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   A 20,000+ word novella

   This was a test of commitment and discipline to finish!

   • William Ledger and the Islands of Alaria

     

     Final Product

   • The Planning

     

     Building an entire world from scratch required A LOT of planning, brainstorming and banging my head against a wall.

   • The exhibition

     

     I then presented the Novella as part of a large exhibition.

2. 

   02

   Art

   Personal projects, selling my art, and art about racism

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   From personal projects and monetization, to addressing social issues - all through art.

   I've always loved doing art.

   • Combatting Racism Through Art

     

     Coming from South Africa, I have witnessed the effects of institutionalized racism. I addressed this through my art through personal experiences and imagery.

     • Artwork one

       

       Scenes of police brutality are hidden amongst a seemingly unified parade.

     • Artwork two

       

       The taxis in South Africa are a dangerous method of transport many are still forced to use. It is a symbol of divide that remains today.

     • Artwork three

       

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     • Artwork four

       

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     • Artwork five

       

       Children separated on a map of South Africa based on how races were segregated during Apartheid.

   • Regional ArtBytes Winner

     

     With the artwork above, I won regionally in the UK.

   • More of my art

     

     Through a number of different mediums, I've expressed myself through art. Additionally, I have also on numerous occasions monetized these artworks.

3. 

   01

   Acting

   Stage roles and a documentary on Lincoln

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   Acting has taught me how to sell myself and a product!

   From a documentary on Abraham Lincoln, to major roles in stage performances, I've had a long standing background in acting.

   • Little Shop of Horrors

     

     I played as Skip Snip, a major role in a production of Little Shop of Horrors.

   • Abraham Lincoln Documentary

     

     I played Willie Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln's son.