Angela Daykin
Chief Financial Officer
Likes
- Walking my dog Bear
- Cheerleading competitions with my daughter
- A beer garden
Meet the nerds behind the words.
We're a Newcastle company on a slightly unusual mission: to make sure no organisation ever again sits on a mountain of customer feedback it can't actually use.
Wordnerds turns what customers say into what organisations do. We integrate AI-powered insight from surveys, complaints, reviews and calls directly into Power BI where decisions happen, so everyone in the organisation can act on what customers are saying, not just the insight team.
How Wordnerds started
Wordnerds began with a December 2015 challenge from Nissan: out of thousands of tweets an hour, could you spot the one or two that hinted at a production-line fault? Pete Daykin pulled in linguist Steve Erdal, they combined brand-new AI with very old linguistics, won the pitch, and by 2017 had turned it into a company.
I'll be honest: it started as a half-arsed idea at a hackathon. In December 2015 my agency took on a 48-hour challenge set by Nissan: out of around 3,000 tweets an hour mentioning them, could we spot the one or two a day that hinted at a real production-line problem?
I was almost certainly the only person in the room without a data science team. So I phoned Steve, a freakishly tall Scottish linguist I'd met in a pub, who'd just identified the author of a Victorian ghost-story manuscript from its linguistic fingerprint. His insight was that language is surprising: people say their 'gearbox is toast' or their 'suspension is goosed', the kind of thing a keyword search would never catch. He sat up all night and wrote 21 rules to find exactly that.
We won. Nissan funded a proof of concept, word spread fast, and we started attracting the kind of global businesses a regional agency could never normally get near. Wordnerds was incorporated as a company in its own right in 2017, and over the stretch that followed I wound down the agency, Steve left his dusty library, and we went all in.
What's struck me most since is that the longer we do this, the more we realise the humans behind the tech matter more than the tech itself. We set out to build a software business that didn't need people. We were wrong, and we're glad we were.
How we got here
No overnight success story, just a stubborn one. Here's the path from a hackathon idea to where we are now.
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Dec 2015A half-arsed idea at a hackathon
The 48-hour Nissan challenge that started it all: spot the rare car faults hiding in thousands of tweets. Pete and Steve's mix of brand-new AI and very old linguistics won the day.
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2017Wordnerds becomes a company
Nissan had funded a proof of concept and word was spreading. We incorporated Wordnerds as a company in its own right, and went all in: Pete winding down the agency, Steve leaving his dusty library behind.
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The early yearsFinding our feet
We won our first customers and grew fast, teaching computers to understand what people actually mean, not just the words they happen to use.
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2020The Grind
Then COVID hit, and it hit our rail-sector customers especially hard. Almost overnight, the ground we'd gained started slipping, and we came close to the edge more than once.
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The cockroach yearsWe didn't die
Someone once dubbed us a "cockroach startup", and the name stuck. We stayed disciplined with every pound, kept solving problems, and refused to go away, and the hard graft quietly forced a sturdier, better product.
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Aug 2024Built to last
Growth followed the better product. In August 2024 we closed a £1.6m funding round to keep investing in the platform and the team, on our own terms, having proved we could survive without it.
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TodayWhere we are now
A team of 23 across data science, engineering, product, customer success and more, working with organisations in UK regulated sectors who need insight they can actually trust and act on.
What we believe
We believe what customers tell you is one of the most valuable things a business owns, and most organisations waste it. Wordnerds exists to close that gap: we help CX and Insights teams turn what customers say into what their organisation actually does, with a forensic understanding of the feedback behind every decision.
Most organisations are sitting on more customer feedback than they could ever read, and acting on barely any of it. The insight gets stuck (in a platform, an inbox, a report nobody opens) while decisions get made on gut feel and the loudest voice in the room.
Our mission is to help CX and Insights teams create remarkable experiences through a forensic understanding of customer feedback. Not surface-level summaries: the granular, evidence-backed why behind what customers are telling you.
Where we're headed: organisations that understand their customers in real time, and use it to change what they offer, predict what's coming, and respond before they're asked. Everyone acting on the voice of the customer, not just the insight team.
What we value
Five things we actually try to live by, not a poster in the kitchen.
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Learn, experiment & change
We make decisions on data, not opinions (including about ourselves). We run the business on the same evidence-led habit we sell, and change our minds when the data says so.
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Own your impact
Everyone here connects their work to something that actually moves the company forward. Owning the outcome matters more than ticking off the task.
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Move the metrics that matter
Our quality bar sits well above "good enough". As Pete puts it, sevens kill start-ups. We aim past the seven.
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Make a connection
Every interaction with Wordnerds should feel warm and genuinely useful. It's why customers tell us the people are the best part of working with us.
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Challenge because you care
We disagree well. Nothing's hidden: we run open-book, and the best idea wins regardless of who it came from.
Meet the founders
Angela, Pete and Steve started it.
Pete Daykin
Chief Executive Officer
Likes
- Playing and watching sport: golf, football, squash, cricket... basically anything you need to change your shoes to do
- Camping with friends and family, particularly in a flash villa somewhere hot and swanky
- Historical fiction (Amor Towles to Ken Follett) and hysterical music (Violent Femmes to Martha)
Steve Erdal
Chief Scientific Officer
Likes
- Scottish mythology
- Family-friendly festivals
- Gentlemen Operating Heavy Machinery, the band I'm in with my two kids (a classic drums/bass/recorder combo)
The tech nerds
Engineering, data science, product and insight, the ones turning customer words into working software.
Hugh Volpe
Head of Data Science
Likes
- Food
- Naps (basically a four-year-old trapped in a 37-year-old's body)
- Learning about new things
Damani Richards
Machine Learning Engineer
Likes
- Cats
- Music
- South London
Steph Clish
Head of Product
Likes
- Taking Darcy, my 14-year-old border terrier, for walks in her pram and watching people realise she's a dog
- Any sport, from CrossFit to snooker
- True-crime documentaries and dramas, except anything unsolved
Izzie Johnson
Product Manager
Likes
- Sunshine and 30°C heat, happy as a lizard on a warm rock
- Deep-tissue massages: equal parts agony and enlightenment
- Pangolins, the best (and most poached) animal, please support a pangolin charity
Peter Houghton
Head of Engineering
Likes
- Having a one-year-old who can already work my coffee machine (win!)
- All-inclusive holidays with the kids
- My pizza oven
Ray Blair
Lead Software Engineer
Likes and dislikes coming soon, Ray's filling his in.
Sam Ward
Senior Software Engineer
Likes
- Friends, The Big Bang Theory and the US Office
- Travel (28 countries and counting!)
- All animals, especially cats
Joshua Matambo
Software Engineer
Likes
- Watching anime
- Reading a good book
- Sunday-afternoon naps
Ruth Erdal
Innovation Manager
Likes
- Working alongside my husband (most of the time...)
- Camping in the sunshine
- Forcing my kids to watch all my favourite sitcoms with me
Beatriz Costa
Insight Analyst
Likes
- Pizza, bread and cheeseboards
- Animals, especially cats
- Music, both listening and making it
Rachel Poulter
Insight Analyst
Likes
- Stupidly spicy food
- Star Trek 🖖
- Motorbike touring with no itinerary, best way to travel
Frankie Brand
Business Intelligence Developer
Likes
- Saturday morning sea dips
- Really, really good sandwiches
- Strava Kudos <3
The customer-facing nerds
Customer success, accounts, operations and marketing, the ones who'll actually pick up the phone.
Helen Precious
Head of Account Management
Likes
- Coffee and croissants. Pasta. Bread. All the bread. Just carbs, really
- The Off Menu Podcast (honourable mention: Ca's Patró March, Mallorca)
- The soundtrack to Big Little Lies
Nat Grant
Head of Customer Success
Likes
- Hearing about all your problems (customer insight and otherwise) and helping solve them
- Music, films, most things from the late 90s and early 00s
- Giant ginger cats
Sarah Wilson
Housing Account Manager
Likes
- Dreaming about my next Disneyworld holiday
- Getting dumplings from the Quayside market
- Theatre trips, particularly to see a musical!
Lyndsay Stenhouse
Senior Customer Success Manager
Likes
- Hiking, travelling and generally being outside
- Making a dent in the large stack of unread books next to my bed
- A cold pint on a hot day
Zoe Wilson
Senior Customer Success Manager
Likes
- When the office playlist is equal measures Biffy Clyro and Taylor Swift
- Cricket, in all its glorious forms
- Words (it's not too cliché to say words, is it?)
Laurna Russell
Operations Manager
Likes
- Food that's bad for you, not dangerous like pufferfish, just all the deep-fried goodness
- Sometimes, just a weekend with no plans
- A perfect parallel park
Stella Dooris
Marketing Operations Coordinator
Likes
- Playing 'would you rather' when there's a lull (prison for three weeks, or until you solve a Rubik's cube?)
- Watching reality TV, the more drama the better, I like to think of it as the study of people
- Singing in the car with friends, preferably abroad
Katie Kavanagh
Customer Success Manager
Likes
- A good pint of Guinness
- Modernist literature
- My beautiful cat Ozzy and crazy dog Willow (ask and I'll share plenty of pics)
Why we love it here
Don't take our word for it. Take theirs.
"Not only great humans, but seriously intelligent and driven. You always feel listened to, valued, and encouraged to share ideas."
— Zoe Wilson, Senior Customer Success Manager
"Nothing's hidden: strategy, results, even the bank balance. That transparency makes it easy to trust the team and take ownership of what we do."
— Izzie Johnson, Product Manager
"We hold our own against some of the biggest, richest companies in the world by working together and thinking differently. We achieve things together that none of us could dream of doing alone."
— Steve Erdal, Chief Scientific Officer & co-founder
"This is genuinely the lushest, smartest and most passionate bunch of people you could ask for. I love problem-solving together and making lives easier."
— Lyndsay Stenhouse, Senior Customer Success Manager
Frequently asked questions
What is Wordnerds?
Wordnerds is a Voice of Customer platform that turns what customers say into what organisations do. It analyses feedback from surveys, complaints, reviews and calls, then delivers themed, explainable insight straight into Microsoft Power BI, so everyone in the organisation can act on what customers are saying, not just the insight team.
Who founded Wordnerds?
Wordnerds was founded by Pete Daykin, Steve Erdal and Angela Daykin. It grew out of a December 2015 innovation challenge set by Nissan, which Pete and Steve won by combining brand-new AI with old-school linguistics to find car-quality issues hidden in social media. Pete closed his agency, and Wordnerds was incorporated in 2017. Today Pete is Chief Executive Officer, Steve is Chief Scientific Officer and Ange is Chief Financial Officer.
Where is Wordnerds based?
We're based in Newcastle, in the North East of England. We're a UK-first company and work with organisations across UK regulated sectors (including social housing, transport, utilities and financial services) where auditable, evidence-backed insight matters.
How big is the Wordnerds team?
We're a team of 23, spanning data science, engineering, product, insight and innovation, customer success, account management, operations and marketing. We're deliberately tight-knit: customers consistently tell us the people are the best part of working with us.
Is Wordnerds an established company?
Yes. The idea was born in a December 2015 Nissan challenge, we incorporated in 2017, came through the COVID years with our customers intact (a "cockroach startup", as someone once dubbed us), and closed a £1.6m funding round in August 2024 to keep investing in the platform and the team.
What are Wordnerds' values?
Five, and we try to actually live them: learn, experiment and change; own your impact; move the metrics that matter; make a connection; and challenge because you care. In practice that means evidence over opinions, a high quality bar, genuine warmth with customers, and an open-book culture where the best idea wins.
