Click to slide down
Home » Grow » Sector Growth » Ambitious Essex Tech 50 » Ambitious Essex Tech 50 – 2026 » Pocket Power
Pocket Power is a STEM and psychology-driven wellness app designed and coded entirely in-house by Essex founders Gareth Prior and Jessica Revell. Built through a combination of lived experience and professional expertise, Pocket Power brings mental, physical and nutritional health together in one guided, step-by-step programme. Using behavioural science and AI-assisted insight, it helps users build healthier habits, understand their behaviours and track progress, all for free. Created to remove the cost barrier that locks millions out of wellness support, Pocket Power is redefining what premium wellbeing should be: accessible, personalised and available to everyone.
2025 has been transformational. Pocket Power was awarded Wellness App of the Year 2025/26 (London and South East) and Jessica was nominated for the Women in Tech Global Awards for her role in building and leading the company. The app remains available across 175 countries on both major app stores. This year, we made major enhancements to our user journey, interface and guided programme to improve clarity, accessibility and long-term engagement. We also strengthened our strategic foundation by bringing on experienced non-executive leaders to support growth, innovation and future AI development. Alongside this, our audience continued to grow organically through micro-influencer collaborations and community outreach, demonstrating strong traction and a rising demand for a free, premium wellness solution that genuinely changes lives.
In 2026, Pocket Power will further strengthen its position as the No. 1 free premium wellness app building on everything we have achieved so far. We are enhancing our AI-assisted personalisation to give users even more meaningful, real-time guidance, refining the user journey so that long-term habit change feels clearer, simpler and more achievable and introducing gamification that supports motivation in a healthy, sustainable way to deepen engagement and retention. We will also expand strategic partnerships with councils, charities and wellbeing providers, bringing accessible, psychology-driven wellness support to more people who have historically been underserved or out-priced by existing platforms. Our focus for 2026 is growth with purpose, scaling the impact of a platform designed to genuinely help people live healthier, more empowered lives.
Absolutely. Essex is one of the most dynamic and supportive regions for tech innovation. With initiatives like the Ambitious Essex Tech 50, active council support, accessible grant programmes and thriving founder networks, Essex provides both the infrastructure and the encouragement that early-stage businesses need to thrive. It’s the perfect environment to build something meaningful with global impact. And for us, that support has been more than structural, it’s been personal. Essex has connected us with mentors, opened doors to opportunities we never knew existed and championed our work long before we had the resources to do it alone. The encouragement, community and belief we’ve received here have played a real part in Pocket Power’s growth, proving that Essex isn’t just a good place for business, it’s a place where founders can genuinely believe bigger and build with confidence.
Start where you are. You don’t require certainty or a perfect plan, what you do require is commitment. We began Pocket Power with no tech background, no external funding and very limited personal funds, just a belief in our mission and a willingness to learn. Treat failures as lessons, stay open to feedback and keep going even when the path feels unclear. Understand that you will face uncertainty, there will be times when it feels like you are going backwards and sometimes the easiest option of giving up will raise its head.. Don’t be tempted by it. Know that your first step is the most important and so are every step after that, but they don’t have to be big, they just have to happen. And the truth is, fear never really disappears, you just learn that your faith in your mission is bigger. There were days we questioned everything, days when the frustration was louder than the progression and days we wondered if we were dreaming too big but every small step built momentum, every challenge taught us something we required to know and every moment of doubt eventually became part of our strength. If you feel scared, it means you’re about to grow. Lean into it. The path reveals itself as you walk it, not before.
We faced nearly every setback possible: no funding, no coding experience, no roadmap and constant technical and financial challenges. We sold personal belongings, taught ourselves to code from scratch and built the entire platform ourselves. Every barrier became an education. By staying adaptable, focused on the mission and committed to honouring our own personal journeys, we turned obstacles into progress and kept moving forward, even when the odds were against us. And beneath it all was a simple truth: we refused to let circumstance define what was possible. Every challenge reminded us why we started; because people who are struggling deserve something better. Because accessible wellbeing shouldn’t be a privilege. Because someone needed to build the thing that didn’t yet exist. Alongside resilience came practical action. We networked everywhere we could, building relationships that opened doors. We reached out to our council whose business support genuinely changed our trajectory. We joined catapult programmes, attended workshops, asked for help whenever we needed it and stayed open to learning from anyone willing to share insight. Some of the most valuable guidance came from the most unexpected conversations. Our journey proves that you don’t need perfect conditions to build something meaningful. You just require belief, persistence and the willingness to keep taking the next step, even when the path isn’t obvious yet.
Our dream collaboration would be with the NHS and national public-health bodies to embed Pocket Power within preventive health frameworks. Working together would allow us to support earlier intervention, reduce pressure on frontline services and provide communities with accessible, psychology-driven tools to improve their mental, physical and nutritional wellbeing. We would also welcome partnerships with mental-health organisations and charities focused on prevention and early support. Collaborations like these would help us reach the people who need help most, expand health equality nationwide and ensure that high-quality wellness support is not limited by income or circumstance. And truthfully, our mission is to get Pocket Power into as many lives as possible, so any collaboration that helps remove cost barriers, widen access and bring real support to everyday people is a perfect collaboration in our eyes. If it moves the mission forward, we’re all in.
Our journey to creating Pocket Power didn’t start with technology, it started with lived experience. Jessica had overcome disordered eating, a broken neck and a sarcoma diagnosis. Gareth built a career as a psychologist and counsellor while navigating dyslexia and Asperger’s. We both knew what it felt like to try to improve your health (physically and mentally) with limited support, limited guidance and limited resources. As we grew through our respective journeys, we both reached the same conclusion: the people who need the most help are often the ones who can’t access it. When we began working together, our combined expertise in psychology, fitness and nutrition evolved into a programme that changed lives in real, tangible ways. But we faced a problem: we could only reach a small number of people at a time. That wasn’t enough. We wanted to help thousands, eventually millions, especially those who were constantly left behind or out-priced. So, naturally, we came to the most logical conclusion:
“Let’s build an app… despite having absolutely no coding experience and no money.” (It sounded slightly less crazy in the moment)
With no funding and no ability to hire developers, we did the only thing we could; we taught ourselves everything from scratch. Coding, UX, design, data structures, deployment… you name it, we learned it, broke it, fixed it, rebuilt it and learned it again. We sold personal belongings, worked the longest hours we’d ever faced and despite the challenges, the unknown and sometimes the real frustration, but never losing our belief, drive or passion, we built Pocket Power one stubborn, determined step at a time. Pocket Power wasn’t born from privilege or perfect conditions, it was born from passion, frustration, lived experience, a shared mission and a beautiful level of confidence that we could figure things out as we went. Today, every feature in the app carries that story. It’s built for the people we once were: people trying to get better, trying to understand themselves and trying to find support that doesn’t break the bank.
“Pocket Power is more than an app, it’s a mission for health equality, built by founders who have lived the challenges their app users face. As we’ve grown, we’ve also become committed to empowering young and underrepresented entrepreneurs. We aim to show that you can create something extraordinary without money, privilege or a tech background, just passion, resilience and the courage to start. Gareth’s experience as a neurodivergent founder and as a woman in tech, Jessica’s journey overcoming significant health challenges prove that innovation belongs to everyone. Pocket Power stands as living proof that no matter your circumstances, you can build something powerful and create real change in the world.”
Visit Pocket Power
