Steve Phillips on building ZappiFounder, Helm
Duncan Cheatle
Duncan Cheatle founded Helm as The Supper Club in 2003, co-founded StartUp Britain and has spent more than twenty years helping UK founders grow, raise and sell.
About Duncan
Duncan started The Supper Club in August 2003 by getting a group of founder friends together over dinner. There was nowhere for founders to have open, honest conversations without being sold to, so he set a no-sales rule that still holds today. The club became Helm in 2022.
He has built and run founder businesses himself: Prelude, the enterprise group behind The Supper Club, and Learn Amp, the learning platform. In 2011 he co-founded StartUp Britain, the national campaign for enterprise launched by the Prime Minister, and he was a director of the Start Up Loans Company.
Duncan has campaigned for the tax reliefs that let founders build and sell. In 2007 his Downing Street petition against scrapping taper relief gathered more than 18,000 signatures, and Entrepreneurs' Relief followed.
He writes Helm's guides on peer groups and Forum, raising money, selling a business and the hard parts of the job, drawing on two decades of conversations around Helm's tables.
Every guide Duncan writes follows Helm's editorial standards: written from founders' experience, confidential by default, checked against public sources and dated.
Track record
Writes about
By Duncan Cheatle. 95 guides and articles
The latest from Duncan. Also from Helm's leadership: Andreas Adamides, CEO.
Do you need a YPO chapter near you, or does a UK forum work better?
YPO is organised around chapters, and your chapter decides most of what membership feels like day to day. That makes geography a bigger part of the decision…
Read the guideHow Hampton, YPO and Helm compare on price
You will find plenty of numbers online for all three. None of them can be traced to the organisation's own website. This is what each actually says, and…
Read the guideHow to choose a CEO peer group: the questions to ask before you pay
Most founders pick a peer group on reputation and a good conversation with a membership team. Here are the questions that would have changed some of those…
Read the guideThe best peer groups for UK scale-up CEOs, compared
Seven organisations come up when a UK founder past a few million starts looking. They are built for different people. Here is who each takes, how each room…
Read the guideWhat does Vistage cost in the UK?
Vistage's UK website tells you a great deal about the Chief Executive Programme and nothing about what it costs. Here is what it does say, what to ask, and…
Read the guideWhat Hampton costs, and what you get for it
Hampton talks about cost on its own FAQ without stating a figure. It is more open than most about what is included and what is not, so that is where the…
Read the guideYPO vs Vistage vs Helm: which room for a UK CEO?
These three get compared constantly and they are less alike than the comparison suggests. One is a global peer organisation, one is a coaching programme with…
Read the guideYPO membership requirements: who actually qualifies in the UK?
YPO publishes four criteria and you need all four. Two of them rule out more UK founders than people expect, and neither has anything to do with how well you…
Read the guideVistage vs Helm: which suits a UK founder?
Both are confidential peer groups with someone in the chair. The differences are the size of the room, who the chair is, how much of your year it takes and…
Read the guideYPO vs Helm for Series A and B founders
Venture-backed founders are the group YPO's criteria fit worst, because the money arrives years before the revenue and headcount do. Here is how the two…
Read the guideHampton vs Helm: which room suits a scaling founder?
Both are curated, both meet ten times a year, both stop people selling to each other. The differences that decide it are sector, geography and who you want…
Read the guideIs Hampton worth it for UK founders?
Hampton opened a London chapter in September 2025, so it is a real option here now. Whether it is the right one depends almost entirely on what kind of…
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