Stephen Rapoport talks about his new project,raising £2m Series A and why the coffee market is ripe for disruption.

Running out of coffee at home can be a real pain. I remember waking up one Saturday morning and the coffee jar was empty so I had to go out to a local corner shop and buy a sub-standard, overpriced bag of big-brand coffee. I’d known for a while that coffee tastes better when it is freshly roasted and that coffee in the supermarket has often been sat on the shelves for months going stale.

I was thinking at the time about what new business to start. My business partner and I had made the tough decision to sell Crashpadder to a San Francisco rival that was dominating the market and doing it better. My wife gave me the best advice I’ve ever received. She told me not to think like an investor but to focus on something I really love. For me nothing beats a coffee made with good quality, freshly roasted beans. A lot of people are only just waking up to this – the boom in the speciality coffee scene is testament to that. And yet we still have over 60% of the UK population drinking nasty instant coffee.

I started Pact from my kitchen in September 2012 to solve this problem. I set out building a website, Tweeting a lot and grinding, packing and shipping every single bag of coffee. I drew the logos on in felt tip, sealed the bags with hair straighteners and queued up at my local post office to send them out.

When you are working on something you are passionate about it helps you focus. Pact was, and still is, driven by a passion and love of coffee, of flavour, of delighting customers. Initially I saw Pact as a way for people to never to run out of coffee but I soon realised the greater opportunity is in helping people to upgrade. We want everyone to start drinking a better cup of coffee.

You can try Pact Coffee for just £1 with the special offer code ‘roundabout’ at www.pactcoffee.com