Edinburgh Business Lessons: Benjamin Llewellyn, founder and director of Nova Herita

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Benjamin Llewellyn, founder and director of Nova Herita, moved to Edinburgh just over 10 years ago. He came to visit, to see more of the world, after leaving school, in Belgium, and as he explains: “I did not return home, as I fell in love with the city.” 

Benjamin launched Nova Herita in December 2023. The business specialises in bespoke web platforms; digital strategy and consulting; digital historic preservation; neurotechnology; and business-technology transformation.

Here, Benjamin shares with us some of the lessons he’s learned about both running a business and doing business in Edinburgh, as a member of the capital’s thriving entrepreneurial community. 

What’s the biggest lesson you've learned from running a business in Edinburgh?

I learned early on that the quality of your work matters less in the short term than the quality of your relationships. Deliver well, treat people with respect and Edinburgh will open doors for you.  

What do Edinburgh clients want and how do you deliver it to them?

Edinburgh clients want to trust you before they pay you. This is not a city where people make quick decisions based on a slick pitch deck. Once trust is established, Edinburgh clients are extraordinarily loyal. The challenge is earning that trust in the first place.

Why do you choose to do business here?

Edinburgh gave me my start when I had nothing to offer except a willingness to work. I arrived in Scotland with no connections and no plan, and this city gave me opportunities I could not have found anywhere else.  

What are the main challenges of doing business in the capital?

There are two main challenges. The first is pace. Edinburgh businesses can be cautious and consensus-driven. If you are building something genuinely new, you sometimes have to accept that the city will come to you on its own timeline rather than yours.

The second challenge is scale. The market here is finite. The most successful Edinburgh businesses use the credibility they build here to compete nationally and internationally.

If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice when you launched your business, what would it be?

I’d advise myself to charge more, sooner. When you are young and unproven, the instinct is to price low to win work, to make it easy for people to say yes. What I did not understand then is that price signals value, and underpricing does not just hurt your revenue, it shapes how clients perceive what you do. I wish I had trusted in my value sooner. 

What has surprised you most about growing a business?

So much of growing a business is emotional rather than operational. Nobody tells you that running a business means sitting with uncertainty for extended periods, not knowing whether a proposal will come through, whether a client will renew or whether the thing you are building will land.

How important are relationships and networking in Edinburgh's business community?

Transactional networking does not work here. Collecting business cards at events and following up with a pitch does not build the kind of relationships that matter in this city.

What works is genuine connection over time, showing up consistently, contributing to conversations without an agenda and being genuinely interested in what other people are building.

The relationships that have made the biggest difference to Nova Herita were not built at networking events. They were built through doing good work that people noticed; through speaking at events and saying something worth remembering; and through being willing to help people before there was anything obvious in it for me.

What opportunities do you see for Edinburgh businesses over the next five years?

AI adoption across the traditional sectors that define this city is still in its earliest stages. Most of the organisations in those sectors know they need to change but have not yet found partners who understand both the technology and the institutional context well enough to help them do it well. That gap is where I see the greatest opportunity for my business.

What trend do you think more businesses should be paying attention to?

The convergence of AI and human performance is an important trend to pay more attention to. We are at the very beginning of a shift where technology does not just automate tasks but actively enhances the capability of the people doing them through neurofeedback, biofeedback, cognitive performance tools and AI systems that adapt to the individual rather than forcing the individual to adapt to them.

Most businesses are still thinking about AI as a cost-reduction tool. The ones who get ahead in the next five years will be thinking about it as a human-enhancement tool. That is a fundamentally different and significantly more interesting proposition.

What excites you most about Edinburgh's future?

Most cities are either defined by their heritage or by their innovation. Edinburgh refuses to choose, and I think that refusal is its greatest strength. What excites me is that we are only just beginning to understand what becomes possible when you provide access to genuinely transformative technology. I intend to spend the next decade finding out.

www.novaherita.com