PINNED to Paul Lindley’s desk are two quotes that he places much store by. One is by the American author Mark Twain and it reads: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do.”

The other is by the American politician Robert F Kennedy, which reads: “Some men dream things that are and ask why, but I dream things that never were and ask why not?”

Lindley was born in Sheffield but moved to Zambia with his family at the age of seven, when his civil-

servant parents were seconded to the Zambian government. From the age of 12 he went to boarding school in Britain, flying back to Zambia in the holidays.

After leaving school at 18, Lindley embarked on a degree in cellular pathology at Bristol university. But after a term realised he had made a mistake and switched to economics and politics.

On graduating, he applied for jobs in the Foreign Office and the United Nations but did not get anywhere, and so joined an accounting firm where he qualified as a chartered accountant, staying there five years.

Then he joined Nickelodeon, the children’s cable-television channel as its financial controller. He stayed 10 years, ending up as deputy managing director.

By now 37, Lindley decided it was time to do something else with his life. “I was getting itchy feet,” he said. “I was really frightened of being an old man looking back on my life thinking I was just an accountant for all those years. I felt it was now or never.”

He found the answer while on holiday with his wife and two young children in Canada. They were going camping for the weekend but could not find any healthy snack foods for the children. It got him thinking, first about exporting British food to Canada and then about starting a children’s healthy food brand.

“I set up Nickelodeon’s Nick Jr channel from concept through to launch and I realised I had created a brand for somebody else that was all about empowering kids and making parents feel comfortable,” he said. “So I started thinking that someone should do that for food. I had spent five of my ten years at Nickelodeon going to focus groups with kids and understood what makes them tick.”

On his return home, Lindley spent six months thinking his plan through and in 2004 quit his job. Then he remortgaged the family home to release £200,000 as start-up capital and gave himself two years to get his children’s food brand off the ground.

He looked around for something that would make his products fun and came across some flexible-pouch packaging in France that he thought would be ideal for children’s smoothies and puréed baby foods.

Explore Entrepreneur

• SME

• Start-ups