Meet the founder · David Everett
The person behind InterGen
At 71, after 40 years building and turning around enterprise software sales businesses and nine years working alongside founders on early stage ventures, I am building the venture that matters most to me. I have been developing the idea behind InterGen, in one form or another, since 2014.
InterGen brings unemployed over-50s and unemployed 18–30s together to build small online service businesses. Each brings something the other needs. The opportunity is in the pairing.
Why I started
Work created at the join
Two generations. Both unemployed. Together, creating work.
July 2026 marked a full stop in my software career and a new start for InterGen. I have led sales teams, turned around underperforming businesses and worked with founders to bring new ventures to market. That experience taught me the value of commercial judgement, credibility and the ability to win a customer’s trust. I also know that today’s digital tools open up possibilities that did not exist when I began my career.
In an InterGen pair, the experienced partner brings sector knowledge, relationships and trust. The younger partner brings digital fluency and platform reach. Together, they develop and sell a service that SMEs need, creating work that was not there before.
I have experienced unemployment myself. I know how quickly it can affect your confidence and sense of identity, whatever your age. That is one reason InterGen treats both partners as capable adults with something valuable to contribute.
Why now
A different option for both generations
Much of the response to unemployment focuses on preparing people to fill existing vacancies. I want to test a different route: bring together two underused forms of human capital, help the pair form a business and win customers for a service that would otherwise go unprovided. That is what I mean by ‘work created at the join’.
InterGen is preparing a 12-month pilot with an inner or outer London council, targeted to begin in early 2027 with around 20 pairs. The aim is to find out whether the InterGen model can produce genuinely new local enterprise and sustained paid work, and to measure the results honestly.
“Keep it simple to explain, rigorous to run.”
That is the discipline I am bringing to the pilot. The idea should be clear enough to explain in a sentence, and strong enough to be tested on whether the work is truly additional.
Let’s talk about creating work together.
If you are interested in helping shape the pilot, supporting a pair or exploring what this could mean for your borough, I would welcome a conversation.
Connect with David on LinkedIn