Before Russell Teale had schools to open, he had Christmas presents to deliver. As a child in Wythenshawe, he would accompany his mother to children’s homes on Christmas Day. Their own presents waited. Other people came first. Years later, when he built a company that helps local groups use school buildings, that order of priorities was still there.
There are grander origin stories in technology. There are certainly warmer ones. Teale remembers a childhood with ice inside the windows, and a mother working three jobs. He went on to become co-founder and chief executive of Vivify Venues, a Manchester business that turns school facilities into bookable community spaces outside teaching hours. The distance between those two parts of his life is considerable. The connection is surprisingly direct.
A film night, an electricity meter, a lesson
His mother, Janice, made small resources stretch. When the gas ran out but the electricity meter still had something left, she turned an evening under blankets into movie night. In Teale’s telling, this was an education in resourcefulness delivered without a syllabus. The circumstances were difficult; the memory also contains warmth.
At 16, he helped look after his newborn brother. Responsibility arrived early, before the job titles and business plans. He has described wanting his own two daughters to inherit his mother’s generous outlook. That gives his ambitions a domestic scale alongside the commercial one: what the business does matters, and so does the example its founder sets at home.
His upbringing helps explain why a school hall might look to him like more than a rectangle on a floor plan. A place where people can meet has a value that is hard to appreciate when one has always had somewhere to go. Teale’s business gives that observation a practical form: a booking, a host, an open door.
The education between departments
Teale attended the University of Chester from 2004 to 2008, studying sport and exercise sciences. His early working life included shifts at Tesco, Cineworld and Blockbuster, along with restaurant and bar work. His first salaried role, as an HR administrator at Total Fitness, paid £12,000 a year.
He rose to operations director and took part in a management buyout. It is an unusually useful apprenticeship for someone whose later company would have to connect a digital booking with the decidedly physical business of running a venue. A calendar can record an appointment. Someone still has to make the appointment happen.
His advice about learning is refreshingly unceremonious: “Get to know people’s names, spend time with them.” He recommends spending time in other departments and understanding colleagues’ jobs. The emphasis is on paying attention. Before asking an organisation to work better, find out how it actually works.
He also acquired a lesson in professional connections. Looking back on his departure from Total Fitness, he said: “I left Total Fitness with no network.” A senior position had supplied plenty of responsibility, but the next chapter required relationships beyond one employer. He now encourages founders to build those connections while they are building their companies.
Two attempts before the school gates
After leaving Total Fitness in 2017, Teale co-founded the business behind FiTR with David Pickering and Rhys Jones. Launched in 2018, the app connected customers with personal trainers and yoga instructors for sessions at home, at work or in local outdoor spaces. The proposition fitted an on-demand world: bring the service to the customer, at a time and place that suited them.
That earlier venture reveals a continuing interest in access. With FiTR, the question was how to make a session fit into someone’s day. At Vivify, the question became how to make an existing building available to the people around it. The business changed; the difficulty of bringing people and places together remained.
He left FiTR in 2019. From February that year until July 2020, he was head of operations at School Lettings Solutions. Working in community lettings put the school estate in front of him as a business opportunity. The facilities already existed. The communities already existed. Bringing them together required an organisation prepared to deal with the details.
A venue business, in a year of closed venues
Vivify began in 2020 with Teale, Alaine Swis and Andy Mellor as co-founders. Launching a business built around gathering people during lockdown demanded a fairly committed view of the future. Schools were shut. The founders worked on the technology and called potential partners, preparing for a time when people could meet again.
Teale’s first workspace was his wife’s makeup table, with an IKEA stool for office furniture. His daughters were two years old and six months old. Orchardside School in Enfield became the first partner; he recalls shouting with excitement when it agreed. The beginnings were small enough for one yes to be an event.
The business later attracted backing from Arete, with investors including former Tesco chief executive Sir Terry Leahy and Bill Currie. Teale has praised the investors’ commitment to the company’s social purpose as well as its financial performance. For a founder selling a commercial service with a community aim, agreement about both halves matters. Otherwise, every decision risks becoming an argument about which half counts.
Growth measured in places people can use
In September 2022, Vivify bought Community Hire, a school lettings platform founded by Jon Goodrick in Tadcaster. Community Hire brought a team of 30 and 16 school relationships, mainly around Luton, London and Bristol. Vivify was working with more than 80 schools at the time of the announcement.
For Teale, the appeal was a fragmented market and a company working towards a similar aim. Acquiring another operator gave Vivify a wider presence, particularly in southern England. It also showed that growth would involve people and local relationships alongside software. A school’s willingness to let a company manage its spaces is something that has to be earned.
The Northgate Sports Centre agreement in Ipswich made that responsibility concrete. In February 2023, Suffolk County Council announced Vivify would take over bookings and the out-of-hours service after the borough council handed back its long-running commitment. Hundreds of people used the site, including running clubs and racquet-sport players.
The council committed more than £235,000 to the new agreement through July 2024. That detail matters. Keeping a community venue available requires operating arrangements and money, even when a technology platform is involved. The headteacher wanted the school to concentrate on education while preserving public access. Teale’s company had to help make those two needs compatible.
By November 2023, Vivify had reported 10 million facility visits and £10 million generated for partner schools. Visits are occasions of use, rather than a count of distinct people. Income generated for schools is also a different measure from Vivify’s own turnover. Keeping those distinctions clear makes the achievement easier to understand: the business was helping existing spaces earn money and find users.
Two measures of the same operation: people using places, and income returning to education.
The chief executive has to change, too
Teale’s leadership interests extend beyond persuading schools to sign up. At a Manchester business roundtable in July 2025, he argued that employers have to adjust to younger generations. His position put the responsibility on the organisation: learn to engage new colleagues and give them a purpose, or expect the business to struggle.
That is a demanding position for a founder. The habits that get an idea started do not automatically suit everyone hired later. A growing company needs enough consistency to deliver its service and enough flexibility for different people to work well within it. Teale’s comments suggest he sees adaptation as part of management’s job.
Recognition followed: he appeared in the LDC Top 50 for 2025 and won the Judges’ Award at the 2025 Northern Leaders Awards. In 2026, his public conversations returned to practical founder concerns, including cash, the value of a commercially minded finance chief, and building a network. The subject matter has moved well beyond getting the first school to say yes.
In August 2026, Katie Winstanley joined as chief operating officer, alongside Teale and chief financial officer Stephanie Potts. Winstanley arrived from Morson Group, where she had spent more than eight years. Her remit included operations, people, customer experience and business transformation.
Teale described the next chapter as “scaling that success without losing what makes us different.” It is a familiar business challenge with a particularly human test here. The experience of a local organiser arriving for a booking has to survive every extra layer of management added at headquarters. Hiring an executive is one decision; making that decision useful at a school door is the work.
A hundred years, and a walk in the Lakes
Asked about success, Teale has set a time horizon considerably longer than a fundraising cycle. There is something pleasingly unfashionable about a technology founder measuring his ambition in generations.
“The true measure of success is if this business is still here in 100 years delivering social impact.”RUSSELL TEALE / 2025
Away from the business, he says he is happiest up a mountain in the Lakes with his family. That is a modest, specific pleasure beside a century-long ambition. Both involve other people and a place to spend time together. His mother’s Christmas deliveries, his daughters, the school buildings: the recurring subject in Russell Teale’s story is who gets included. His company has made opening the door a daily occupation.