How Wilbert Came to Life

If you'd told either of us a couple of years ago that we'd be building an app, we'd probably have laughed.

Neither of us comes from a tech background, we certainly haven't spent our careers writing code or launching start-ups. What we have spent our careers doing is helping people get organised, solving problems and making life a little easier.

Looking back now, Wilbert almost feels like the natural next step.

We just didn't know it at the time.

It all started with a friendship

Millie and I first met back in 2005 while working together at Tishman Speyer in London.

We got on straight away... well, I took a bit of convincing, but Millie soon weedled her way into my life.

As we got to know each other, we realised we shared the same outlook on work and life. We both love helping people organise their lives and businesses, making things simpler and taking a little of the stress away.

As the years went by, we found ourselves saying more and more,

"One day we'll work together."

We just never knew what that would look like.

Life happened.

Our careers took us in different directions.

But somehow we always came back to the same conversations.

Different careers. The same values.

Although our careers followed different paths, they were both built around helping people.

Millie set up her own Virtual Assistant business in 2008, supporting business owners with both their business and personal lives. Over the years, her role naturally evolved into that of a Business PA, Personal PA and Household Manager, helping busy people juggle businesses, homes, travel, cars and everything else life throws at them.

During Covid, in August 2020, she also started her own cleaning business, giving her another perspective on what it really takes to keep a busy household running.

My career stayed in the corporate world before taking me into higher education at the University of Lincoln and then back into commercial real estate. Throughout that time I spent more than 30 years supporting senior leaders, managing operations and looking for ways to make complicated things simpler.

More recently, I started OBERON Virtual Assistant, where I help founders and growing businesses get organised and create a bit more operational calm.

Looking back, it's actually quite obvious.

We'd spent years doing the same thing in different ways.

Helping people.

Making life easier.

Reducing stress.

Neither of us likes seeing people overwhelmed if there's a better way of doing something.

Looking for ideas

Wilbert wasn't actually the first idea we'd talked about.

Over the years we'd often say,

"Wouldn't it be great if someone came up with something that helped with that?"

After I lost both of my parents, we spent a lot of time talking about how difficult bereavement can be, not just emotionally but practically too.

We wondered whether there was something we could create that would genuinely help people through that experience.

It wasn't really about funerals.

It was about people.

It was another example of us asking ourselves the same question we'd asked lots of times before.

"How could we make life just that little bit easier?"

At the time, we still hadn't found the right idea.

Then came Rhodes...

In June 2026 we headed off to Rhodes for what was supposed to be a nice relaxing holiday.

Now here's the funny bit.

By the time we'd boarded the plane, we'd completely convinced ourselves we were starting a T-shirt business.

Honestly.

For the whole flight we talked about funny slogans, designs and ideas. The poor lady sitting next to us couldn't help overhearing us and even told us she thought it sounded like a brilliant idea.

That didn't exactly help!

For the first couple of days, we carried on.

Around the pool we'd fill page after page of a notebook with ideas and sketches.

But something just didn't feel right.

It was fun.

It was creative.

But it wasn't really us.

Then I remembered an idea Millie had mentioned before about an app that could help people keep on top of household admin.

I remember saying,

"What about that app idea?"

Within minutes we'd forgotten all about T-shirts.

Instead we were talking about insurance renewals...

Home insurance….

Car servicing...

Pet records...

Warranties...

Subscriptions...

The list just kept getting longer.

We suddenly realised we weren't the only people trying to remember all this stuff.

For the first time, it felt like we'd found something that really reflected who we were and everything we'd both spent our careers doing.

So we grabbed the notebook...

...and started writing.

Page after page.

Ideas.

Features.

Questions.

Categories.

That same notebook is still sitting on my desk today.

Ironically, there are hardly any pages about T-shirts.

Finding the name

Coming up with the name probably took longer than we'd like to admit.

Our notebook was full of sensible, quite boring names.

Home Manager.

Home Hub.

Home HQ.

They all made perfect sense.

But none of them felt like us.

Once we were back from Rhodes, I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Then one day, while Millie and I were chatting on the phone, I suddenly said,

"What about Wilbert?"

Millie's twin boys are called William and Albert. They're also my godsons, so they've been a huge part of my life since the day they were born. Over the years, their names had naturally become combined into the nickname Wilbert.

There was a little pause.

Then Millie said,

"I love it."

That was it.

We'd found our name.

Looking back now, we couldn't imagine calling it anything else.

More than an app

The funny thing is, we've never really been interested in building an app just for the sake of building an app.

We simply wanted to create something that would make life a bit easier.

Something simple.

Something helpful.

Something that quietly sits in the background and helps you stay on top of the things that are easy to forget.

Whether that's an insurance renewal, a warranty, a service or one of the hundred other things life throws at us.

Whenever we're making decisions about Wilbert, we always come back to the same question.

"Will this genuinely make someone's life a little bit easier?"

If the answer's yes, we know we're heading in the right direction.

Looking back, it's quite funny really.

We went to Rhodes thinking we were going to come home with a T-shirt business.

Instead...

We came home with the beginnings of Wilbert.

And honestly...

We wouldn't have it any other way.