I worked on Big Brother before I danced to the drum beat of shamanism

When Kate Prince told 12 friends at a dinner party in 2017 that she had started taking supplements of collagen to boost her health and wellbeing, they looked at her like she had two heads. “Everyone thought I was mad,” laughed Prince.
When she then told them she was so convinced of the benefits that she was considering launching a health supplements business, “they were like, ‘I’ve never heard of this; I don’t think it’s going to fly.’ ”
Prince ignored their misgivings and went on to start Ancient + Brave in 2018. The timing of the launch, not long before the outbreak of Covid, turned out to be fortuitous, with the pandemic creating a cohort of consumers more open to the idea of “preventative” medicine, including the taking of supplements, said Prince, 51. “We’re all more willing to invest a little more in ourselves.”
The rapid growth of her business certainly backs this up. Last year, Ancient + Brave, which draws inspiration from South American shamanic rituals, more than doubled sales to £10.2 million and had pre-tax profits of £2.6 million. Its main products include True Collagen, which can be added to food and drink, and others that are pre-mixed with hot drinks, including cacao and matcha. Proponents of taking collagen say the benefits include improved sleep, skin, hair and nail health, and enhanced focus and cognition, with celebrity fans of Ancient + Brave including television presenter Davina McCall, singer Ellie Goulding and athlete Dame Kelly Holmes.
But before she got into holistic health, Prince was a lawyer — a career she had coveted since watching LA Law as a teenager, drawn in by the “glamour, hot men and amazing outfits”. Schooled at a local Catholic comprehensive according to the wishes of her parents — her mother was a teacher and her father worked in the council to secure funding for deaf and partially sighted people — “I had a strong sense of self and moral compass,” said Prince. “But I was looking for progression and was hugely ambitious.”
Her plans were upended when her father died suddenly at the end of her first year studying law at the University of East Anglia. “That changed my whole life,” said Prince. “I went off the rails a little bit.” She deferred her degree to spend time with her mother and also took a couple of part-time jobs, including serving drinks in a bar in Key West, Florida, for six months. “I found myself again and was like, ‘I’m going back to university and finishing my degree.’ ”
Having completed her studies, she got a job at a City law firm, where she qualified as an employment lawyer in 2001. The experience was underwhelming. “You get paid well but you are selling your soul and it’s very hierarchical. I felt like I was in some old boys’ network or some boarding school, which I didn’t have any experience of, except from reading books.”
She moved to a job in the entertainment practice of law firm Harbottle & Lewis, but still life in the legal profession didn’t click. “It was hard, because you’ve wanted it your whole life and suddenly you realise, ‘I don’t know if I’m terribly good at this and I don’t know if this is really what I want.’ ”
Prince finally found her feet at Endemol, the TV production company responsible for launching reality show Big Brother and game show Deal or No Deal, joining in 2003 as a legal and business affairs executive. “You have to start on the basic stuff like series 17 of Ground Force and series 23 of Changing Rooms, but then you get all the fun stuff.” she recalled.
She also worked on early series of Big Brother, where she was responsible for drawing up contracts for contestants. “We were doing things that had never been done before, and so when we were drafting commercial agreements, we would be kind of making it up as we went along. It was scary and brilliant at the same time.”
Prince left after four years, when she and her husband, Simon, decided to swap fast-paced London for a quieter life in Sussex. She continued to work in the entertainment industry as a consultant while the couple started a family — they have two boys, now aged 16 and 14 — but then in 2014 they set up a business blending and selling tea, called Prince & Sons.
Prince found she really enjoyed the creative side of launching a brand, but less so working with her spouse. “We would be lying in bed with one of us asking, ‘Have you called that person?’ or ‘Have you chased that?’ We are very different characters and we can’t work together,” she smiled.
It was around this time, after taking a nutrition course to help with gut health and general wellbeing, that Prince started looking closely at the supplement market — and saw a gap for a premium collagen brand. “I knew I could do it in sustainable packaging that feels kind of sexy, cool and edgy. You want it on your shelf, not to hide it away in a cupboard, and I could bring quality ingredients.”
Initially, it was tricky to source quality collagen from anywhere other than South America, hence the influence of the region on the brand. “I love anything kind of shamanic — that drum beat is always in my head,” she said. Prince recently returned from a family holiday in Mexico where she managed to convince her older son to join her in a “sweat lodge” meditation session. Led by a shaman, the ancient practice is believed to promote improved physical and mental health and wellbeing.
The increasing popularity of collagen, meanwhile, has led to a thriving market in Europe, so she is now able to source more locally, with most ingredients coming from the EU. They are then blended and packaged in the UK.
Prince said much of Ancient + Brave’s growth has come post-pandemic, with the staff noting “a bit of a buzz” in the last few months of 2022 before hitting a growth spurt in the first quarter of 2023. “We had a team of ten [at the time], including in the warehouse. We would have pizza nights where we were packing until eight or nine o’clock. It was hugely exciting but incredibly hard work.”
To cope with the increased demand, Ancient + Brave has now grown to a team of 58, helped by a £7 million investment from Piper, the private equity firm, in 2023. Despite not being based in London, Prince has found recruiting skilled staff to be straightforward. “We’re not far from Brighton and Hove and I think that draws in people who maybe have had the London career and lifestyle and are now looking for something a little bit different.”
But Price added that, right from the start, Brexit has proved far harder to deal with. “There was no advice coming out [from the government]. No one knew anything. And then, in December 2020, it was finally happening and we had two weeks to incorporate a company [within the EU] in Ireland and start a bank account.”
That was just the beginning of months of bureaucracy and delays, she said. “I had awful, sleepless nights where I was almost in a ball, rocking. It was so frustrating because I couldn’t solve it — no amount of hard work helped, nobody knew what they were doing.” Brexit put the brakes on exports — sales in the EU fell as a proportion of sales from 20 per cent to less than 5 per cent — but now Prince now is ramping them back up, with recent launches on Amazon in Germany, France, Spain and Italy.
To help with the stress of life as a founder, she took up drumming in 2018 and still finds it a brilliant distraction from the day-to-day. “Before this, I’d never had a music lesson in my life, so I’m trying to read the music and listen to the beat and then work out what my hands and feet are doing. It’s like the best meditation because you cannot think of anything else.”
My hero … Nikki Cheetham, who was an executive producer at Endemol when I worked there. She was a total badass at a time when there weren’t many women at the top in the television industry. She was a real powerhouse — she knew what she wanted and got results.
My best decision … People talk a lot about impostor syndrome, but my best decision has been to embrace my inner impostor syndrome and live outside my comfort zone to keep pushing forward.
My worst decision … to keep telling myself, initially, that I needed a co-founder or a business partner. Of course you need a whole team, but at the top I really just need me.
Funniest moment … When I was negotiating with investors, I had to write down a little crib sheet with all of the acronyms on it, because I had no idea what people were talking about.
Best business tip … Focus on progress, not perfection. Sometimes you’ve just got to take the leap because if you over-analyse or over-plan, you freeze and your team freeze and you can potentially miss the moment.