Matt Grech-Smith.
Two decades building real-world experiences worth leaving the house for — from the UK's largest youth events company, through experiential campaigns for O2, Coca-Cola and McLaren, to co-founding Swingers, coining “competitive socialising” and scaling it across six cities and two continents. The playbook is always the same: brand, space, guest journey, execution. Click a step to jump to that chapter.
Rough Hill — founder & managing partner.
Co-founded with Jeremy Simmonds as Manchester University students; scaled into the UK's biggest organiser of youth music events — 25+ weekly events nationwide — before a successful acquisition in 2012. (Preceded by a year's commission as a Second Lieutenant in the British Army, 105 (BATUS) Squadron RLC.)
VCCP Partnership — founder & managing partner, VCCP Live.
Built a market-leading youth marketing and experiential agency inside ad group VCCP, dreaming up campaigns for O2, Coca-Cola and McLaren — including the world's largest game of spin the bottle, on the London Eye.
The insight that changed everything
The agency work revealed that people wanted more from their days and nights out than sitting at a table — they wanted to get up and do something. That observation became the seed of Swingers.
Blue-chip clients
O2 · Coca-Cola · McLaren — experiential campaigns engineered for discovery, conversion and physical attendance: the funnel most experience businesses struggle to crack.
Swingers / The Institute of Competitive Socialising — co-founder & CEO.
“We found an aging Shoreditch warehouse and turned crazy golf into a night out. Five months later we had a viral hit — and a phrase we coined: competitive socialising.”
the origin, 2014 — own money invested firstA repeatable venue playbook
Systematic cross-border scaling: scalable venue templates that keep brand consistency and profitability across markets, with premium partnerships from the Mandalay Bay Casino (Las Vegas) to the Oxford Street flagship (London).
Category creation
Premium food, cocktails and service matched to the experience — one of only a few British brands to genuinely crack the US market, and the origin of an entire industry category.
Recognition
Plus CGA Peach Hero & Icon “Best Newcomer” and Gold — Company of the Year, Hospitality & Leisure.
SKINSTATE — co-founder.
Having stepped back from Swingers to create and advise real-world, experience-led businesses — entertainment, wellness, retail — Matt brings the playbook to skin: brand, space, guest journey, execution.
Why it fits
SKINSTATE's clinics are premium physical experiences with a diagnostic hook — exactly the discovery → conversion → attendance funnel Matt has spent two decades cracking. His venue-template discipline maps directly onto the ~20-site roll-out.
Skin in the game
Committed £500k personally at the first close — the largest founder cheque in the plan, ahead of the £17.0m external raise.
“People are craving real-world experiences more than ever. The experiential industry is only just getting started.”
© 2026 SKINSTATE · source: Matt Grech-Smith profile · strictly private & confidential — for discussion only