Vijay Patel: The story
I'm doing the most hands-on, technically demanding, and creative work of my career right now: building AI products end to end while the landscape constantly evolves.
That's the short version. The longer one is fifteen years leading digital, founding a company, and taking things from zero to one. That history is exactly what makes the building I do now different.
Turning points
Jack Morton: VP of Digital: Creativity, strategy, and leading technical teams
I started in agencies, running digital accounts and campaigns for brands like Microsoft, New Balance, Grolsch and Corona across 14+ international markets. At Jack Morton Worldwide I built a team of 11 and redefined the agency's digital offering, winning the Oculus UK account along the way. This is where I learned to translate between clients, creatives and engineers, and to ship on a deadline that wasn't mine to move.
2018: Bridge & Tunnel: Building a company of my own
I co-founded Bridge & Tunnel, a performance-focused agency, and grew it from zero to £1.3M in annual revenue (£3M in three years) and a team of 9. I led a DTC transformation for New Balance across 20+ markets that returned £10 for every £1 spent, then the business was acquired by Krow Group. Founding and seeing it through to an acquisition teaches you things that advising from the outside never will.
Sportradar: Scale, and being part of an IPO team
After the acquisition I joined Sportradar as Global Head of Digital, leading a team of 12 and playing a key role in preparing the company for its IPO: brand positioning, the new sportradar.com and investor-relations sites, and internal digital transformation across multiple M&As. A different altitude, with much higher stakes attached to every decision.
Newsmast Foundation: Zero to one
Between Sportradar and Rolling Waves I took a charity, the Newsmast Foundation, from nothing to its first 1,000 users in a year: charity status, native mobile apps and a digital platform delivered. It added the one thing the bigger roles never could: building something mission-driven from zero to one.
Now: Rolling Waves: Building at the frontier
For the past two-plus years I've been building AI products hands-on through Rolling Waves: native iOS and macOS apps, SaaS platforms, generative video pipelines, Chrome extensions, internal tools, workflow automations, RAG and vector systems. It's the most creative and technically demanding work of my career, and I'm doing it at the frontier, every day.
The through-line
The same thread runs through every chapter. I led the digital team at Jack Morton, one of the world's leading brand-experience agencies. I built it to eleven people and won the Oculus launch. I took that into Bridge & Tunnel, an agency of my own, and grew it to acquisition. Then onto the public stage at Sportradar, leading digital through a Nasdaq IPO.
Bigger stakes each time, but always the same work: getting the creative, the engineers, the production and the commercial side pulling together, and shipping. That's exactly what building an AI product takes. And now I build it myself.
I'm equal parts strategist and tinkerer: happiest with a hard problem, a blank file, and something real to ship by the end of the day.
These days that means a new build most weeks, writing about what I learn, and helping senior leaders get genuinely hands-on with AI.