I'm Desmond — Managing Director of Cool Smarts Ltd in the United Kingdom, and CEO of Mahachi Desmond Private Limited in Zimbabwe. Away from the boardroom I'm a pianist and songwriter (you'll find my catalogue on Verse-Chorus), an engineer by training, and a lifelong student who still can't put the books down. Make yourself at home — this is where you get to know me.
My London chapter. I lead Cool Smarts from the City — the day-to-day of running the company, choosing what we say yes to, and making sure the boring parts (governance, contracts, cash) never become the interesting parts.
coolsmarts.co.uk→My own house. The vehicle I built in 2025 for original projects, long-horizon bets, and the things I'd want to work on even if nobody paid me to.
“Code taught me patience. Music taught me feel. Business is just both, rehearsed in public until the timing lands.”
Whether it's a project, a track, a code review, or coffee in Harare or London — my inbox is open to the interesting stuff.
One is my London operating company. The other is my personal holding vehicle back home. Different jurisdictions, same standards — same person signing the letters.
My City of London base. This is where the commercial work happens — partners, mandates, and the operating discipline that keeps a young company sturdy.
My personal vehicle. It's the container for original projects — software I build, music I release, and the long, quiet bets I want to make on my own terms.
Not a résumé — more a map of where my attention goes on a normal week. Some of it is business. Some of it is a keyboard and a pair of headphones.
I came up through engineering and computer science, and I still think in systems. Whether I'm structuring a company or debugging a payments flow at 1am, it's the same muscle.
Programming is my first language of thought. I still ship code — small tools, internal automations, the occasional side project — because staying close to the craft keeps me honest as an operator.
Strategy, finance, ops, people — I like being end-to-end. Small teams, tight loops, decisions made by people who actually understand the work.
Two time zones, two regulatory worlds, one operating standard. I've learnt to move contracts, capital, and trust across the corridor without dropping the tempo.
Boards, filings, cadence, boring paperwork — I set the scaffolding early. Companies I'm involved in are meant to outlast the enthusiasm that started them.
I'd rather earn a pound than raise ten. Lean teams, revenue over hype, decisions I could still defend in five years.
Music is the other half of my brain. It's where I go when the spreadsheets get loud — and it's where I learnt that timing, restraint, and repetition beat volume every time.
I'd rather you trust the registers than trust the marketing. Everything below is verifiable without asking me.
Listed officer of Cool Smarts Ltd (Companies House No. 16952407) in the City of London.
Chief Executive of Mahachi Desmond Private Limited, registered in Harare.
The name on LinkedIn, on Companies House, and on this page all point to one human — me.
Active on both sides of the corridor. Not an advisor with a laptop — a director with a stamp.
I'm the graduate of a school that hasn't stopped enrolling me — code, music, business, and the quiet hours in between.
Primary school between Tilbury (Chimanimani) and Maregedze (Gutu). Football keeper, quiz kid, percussionist, novel reader — I finished grade 7 top of Gutu district with 6 units, but I really just liked knowing how things worked.
Muzondo High, Chivi. Serious about physics, chemistry, astronomy and biology; self-studied Chemistry, Accounting and Biology on the side; started writing songs (about 135 by 2021) and dabbling in Python and C. Finished as top of the school, second in the district.
Boarded at Chibi High to prove a point about equal footing. Two subjects beyond the A-Level load, Further Maths, Managerial Economics, more programming (R, C, C++, HTML, JavaScript), more songs. National highest that year — a quiet result that stayed quiet.
The two subjects that rewired how I think. Half the reason I can read a balance sheet is that I first learnt to read a stack trace.
I still open the editor most weeks. Little tools, personal automations, the occasional weekend rebuild — it keeps the instinct sharp.
The other studio. Songwriting and production are how I decompress and how I practise taste — which turns out to be a founder skill too.
A quiet year of operator study: governance, capital allocation, how good companies actually behave. That reading is what became Mahachi Desmond Pvt Ltd.
UK Companies House one week, Zimbabwean filings the next. Not glamorous — but the paperwork is where trust is actually stored.
Running a UK company from the City. The curriculum no course sells: showing up, deciding, and living with the decisions.
A small, honest record of what I'm making and what I'm learning — the business bits and the human bits, side by side.
Some weeks it's a short essay on running a small company across two countries. Some weeks it's a demo I finally finished, or a snippet of code I'm proud of. It's all the same person — I just stopped pretending the parts of my life were separate.
LinkedIn is still the easiest door to knock on. The rest are the corners of the internet I actually keep up with — music, writing, and the public records that back up the story.
Desmond Mahachi — a Zimbabwean founder based between Harare and the City of London. I run Cool Smarts Ltd in the UK and Mahachi Desmond Pvt Ltd back home. Off the clock I'm usually at a piano, writing code, travelling, or reading something I probably should have finished last week.
Engineering and computer science first, and a lot of self-taught study around it. I went through primary school in Chimanimani and Gutu, finished O-Level with 10 As, and A-Level with 7 As (35 points) — the kind of foundations that made systems thinking feel natural.
Yes, almost every week. Internal tools, small automations, the occasional weekend rebuild. Staying close to the craft keeps me honest as an operator and reminds me what "done" actually feels like.
It's the other half of me. Songwriting and production are how I decompress, and where I practise taste — timing, restraint, knowing when to leave space. Turns out those are business skills too.
Cool Smarts Ltd is my UK company (Companies House No. 16952407, based at 128 City Road, London EC1V 2NX) and the house behind a small family of consumer brands. It's already home to earlybirdstyle.com, and I'm getting ready to launch ERLBY — a travel-gear label (bags and kit for people who actually live out of them) that comes straight out of my own love for being on the move.
Mahachi Desmond Pvt Ltd is my Zimbabwean corporate umbrella — founder-owned, incorporated in January 2025, and focused on retail, logistics, agriculture and education. It isn't a holding company; it's the company behind the brands. Right now it's experimenting with e-commerce through mahachidesmond.com, and bringing my7bucks.com to market soon, with VaultPay and Preyuni also in the making.
Both, honestly. Harare is home and where Mahachi Desmond Pvt Ltd sits. London is where Cool Smarts runs from. I move between the two like most people move between rooms — and I travel every chance I get in between.
LinkedIn is the easiest door. Whether it's a project, a partnership, a track, or just a good question — send it and I'll read it.