Martin Delany, CEO of BuzzHubs, tells the origin story ...
The Birth of BuzzHubs
It’s April 2020 and a global pandemic is causing devastation all over the world as hospitals struggle to cope with a new virus called Covid-19. With no vaccine and countries scrambling for treatment options, government work from home directives force businesses to abandon the old school office and set up home working en masse.
So while some industries got hammered with the wrong end of the stick, many office based companies carried on more or less as normal. It was no real surprise that many people loved this new found flexibility and benefited from less stress, more money in their pockets and time saved commuting. I’ll hold my hand up first and say “I’m one”. I personally benefited from spending more time at home and having a more flexible working day. Did I work less and achieve less, no, but I had more time in the day and dived head first into flexible working. At this point, my youngest son was 4 and a real “Mummy’s boy”. No such thing as a goodnight kiss for Daddy as he just wanted his Mummy. Fast forward a few months and he wouldn’t accept anyone other than Daddy putting him to bed. His “your face is too spiky” excuse which sounded straight out of a “That’s not my Daddy” book was consigned to history and we became best buddies. I did and still do things I had incredibly never done before, simple stuff like pick the kids up from school and take them to the park, play football with them in the garden at 3.30pm on a Monday or go for an ice cream on a Friday afternoon. Flexible working opened the door to a lifestyle which had previously been off limits.
Gary, our Developer Guru, emigrated to the Rockies so he could live his passion and snowboard several months of the year. He fully embraced a work anywhere approach and delivers on his goals flexibly around his family and hobbies. If you love snowboarding and you can live in the Rockies then why the **** not?
Square Pegs in Round Holes?
But while this was great personally, there were some cracks appearing in the business culture, motivation and engagement. Sure we embraced all the tools of the day from video calling to project management to instant messaging, and they do 100% help. But they were not built for remote first business, and it did feel like papering over the cracks as we were running a remote first business as if it was an office based one. Like square pegs in round holes, businesses and its technology were not designed primarily for remote working and trying to recreate an office set up digitally is doomed for failure.
So faced with an obstacle, some usually astute business leaders immediately yearned to get their staff back in the office and “shake some hands”, as if this will magically solve all their problems. It wouldn’t, and more importantly, it would miss a once in a lifetime opportunity to create something new, and something a whole lot better.
Performance over Presence, Real Time Recognition and Trust through Transparency
So with all this in mind, BuzzHubs was born. Firstly with an unshakeable belief that it would help our existing business, but always with equal belief that it can help many other businesses too. We wanted to give thousands more businesses the confidence to offer home working so all their employees could benefit from a better work/life balance, all the while increasing business performance at the same time.
This is what BuzzHubs delivers, it gives the best of both worlds where the business itself and their people win. We didn’t achieve this by trying to recreate the out-dated office. We achieved this by rewriting what work looks like, by providing the platform to tear up workplace geography and give diversity and inclusion an environment to thrive.
Work and culture built on performance over presence, real time recognition and trust through transparency. Work with us and watch how BuzzHubs can help send your people’s desire to succeed through the roof and deliver a level of performance you never thought possible.
Make it happen and make a better working world.
Our Team
Martin Delany
CEO
Previously co-founded Lifetime Protection Services, Bon Accord Mortgages and SaveOnLife.co.uk. Organically grew from kitchen table to 100+ office based employees in 6 years. Covid-19 forced a re-think of what work looks like and successfully started BuzzHubs to transform the way the other businesses operated. Resulted in higher staff retention, increased performance, higher staff engagement scores and downsized from 7000 to 1500 sq ft of office space. Passionate about delivering a better working world for as many businesses as possible where flexible working means higher productivity and happier employees.
Gary Joynes
CTO
Founder of multiple SaaS products and SaveOnLife.co.uk. Has grown software solutions from startup phase to mature commercial systems processing large numbers of transactions and concurrent users. Currently applying a passion for software development to the challenges of remote working.
Connor Finan
Senior Frontend Engineer
Previously worked with Martin and Gary at SaveOnLife.co.uk developing the front end of one of Scotlands Largest online life insurance brokers. Having built up a lot of experience working over multiple languages and framworks which have helped build and maintain multiple websites for high profile clients such as Celtic Compare and Rangers Protect.
Ben Jones
Senior Backend Engineer
Founder of multiple SaaS products alongside Gary. Was in charge of scaling these companies growing from 1-2 million records per month to 100m+ per month. Previously worked for a company which created billing solutions for energy and utility companies in which he was a systems architect for a product that processed hundreds of millions of records per month across servers distributed around the globe that maintained a 99.99% uptime.
Where are we located?
Use the map below to find our pins! We are located in Canada, UK and New Zealand
Copyright 2025 @ BuzzHubs
Registered No: SC659829. BuzzHubs is a registered trademark of BuzzHubs Ltd. 272 Bath Street, Glasgow, Scotland, G2 4JR.