Three businesses, one name.
MettleNest is an enterprise software development company working with UK businesses. Formerly CostaReach and Evana Ventures. This page is how we got here, and what each step taught us.
Each business grew out of the last one.
Building websites showed us how much small businesses depend on their own data. Helping people start businesses showed us how many decisions they make without it. Building enterprise software gave us the skills to do something about it.
Bringing everything together as MettleNest lets us put all of that into one place: software and AI, starting with our AI financial advisor.
Five steps, each one forced by the last.
The dates are on our story. This is what was going wrong at each step, what we did about it, and what we took with us.
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01Aug 2023
One phone and a list of local businesses.
Most of the trades businesses around us had no website, or one nobody had touched in years. Ethan started calling them, one by one, and building sites for the ones that said yes. That was CostaReach.
What we didTurned up, did the work, showed the result. No pitch deck.
What it taught usYou earn a small business owner’s trust by doing something for them, not by explaining what you could do.
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02Jan 2024
Websites became the data behind them.
Every client had years of customer records scattered across spreadsheets, paper and phones, and none of it was being used. They kept asking for more than a website, and Ethan wanted CostaReach to be a business solutions agency, not a web shop.
What we didOrganised the records they already had, ran Google review campaigns from them, and pointed advertising at the customers most likely to come back.
What it taught usThe most valuable thing a small business owns is the data it already has and isn’t looking at.
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03Nov 2024
People asked how to start a business, so we started them.
Enquiries about company set-up kept arriving. Advice wasn’t what people needed; they needed it done. Evana Ventures did the formation, bank accounts, paperwork and licensing, branding, websites and hiring, start to finish. In January 2025 it became the main business and CostaReach closed to new clients.
What we didSet up 36 businesses. Watched what happened to them afterwards.
What it taught usFour things, and they became the AI advisor. Owners make their biggest financial decisions on gut feel. The same handful of questions comes up every time: hire, buy or lease, price, borrow. Advice doesn’t get acted on; execution does. And set-up isn’t the hard part. The first two years are.
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04Mar 2025
A referral turned into enterprise software.
An existing client introduced us to a warehouse and logistics operator that couldn’t find what it needed off the shelf. We built it from scratch: an inventory system that tracks stock by weight, with pressure sensors under every shelf and a trained model deciding what moved. A long build with nothing to copy.
What we didBuilt it well enough to run for other operators too. By August 2025 it was white-labelled and in use with more enterprise clients under their own brands.
What it taught usBuild once, properly, and one client’s system becomes a product.
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05Nov 2025
Three businesses became one name.
By late 2025 we were running a web agency, a business set-up consultancy and an enterprise software practice at the same time. Each one grew out of the last, but three names pulled in three directions. MettleNest put everything under one roof.
What we didClosed Evana Ventures to new clients in February 2026 and started building the AI financial advisor, in-house, on everything the first two businesses had taught us.
What it taught usFocus costs you work you could have taken. It’s still the right trade.
What it actually took.
Running three at once.
A web agency, a set-up consultancy and a software practice, each with its own clients and its own name. Merging them wasn’t branding. It was the only way to think straight.
Turning work away.
Closing CostaReach and then Evana Ventures to new clients meant saying no to people we could have helped. We did it to protect the build, and we still support every client we already had.
Building with nothing to copy.
The first enterprise system had no reference to work from. It took longer than anyone wanted. It’s also why the second and third clients were fast.
What hasn’t changed since the first phone call.
We do the work.
From our first websites to company formation, we’ve always built the thing rather than advised on it.
We build to last.
Software we build for one client is built well enough to serve many.
We show our working.
Clients see how we got to an answer, which is how our AI financial advisor will work too.
The person building it.
Ethan
FounderEthan started CostaReach in August 2023, by cold-calling local businesses to build their websites. Within three years he had grown it into an agency with 72 active clients, set up Evana Ventures, and won MettleNest’s first enterprise software clients in warehousing and shipping logistics.
Setting up 36 businesses showed him how owners make their biggest financial decisions: mostly on gut feel, without the analysis a large company would have. That’s why MettleNest’s ongoing major project is an AI financial advisor built for them.
Today he leads a small engineering team building enterprise software and the AI financial advisor.