Rachel Murphy

Murphy was a director at the UK Department for Education and later Director of Digital Development at NHS Digital, where she oversaw the development of the NHS App. She has said that before leaving the NHS she led the Empower the Person programme with Juliet Bauer, managing a budget of about £300 million.⁠[1][2][1][1]

In 2017 Murphy joined Difrent, based in Newcastle, as chief executive. Difrent had been a recruitment company founded by Steve Dhillon, who wanted to build it into a services business; when Murphy joined, its turnover was £2.8 million. She has said she joined for the freedom to build a services business, creating “the business I couldn’t find to buy services from” in her government roles, and that she originally saw it as a five-year commitment.⁠[2][3][1][1][1]

That year Difrent won a small discovery project from the NHS Business Services Authority (NHSBSA) to propose a target architecture for a new service to replace the existing NHS Jobs recruitment platform, and the two organisations went on working together. Murphy has said this work centralised recruitment across the NHS on a single platform.⁠[4][5]

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Difrent worked with partners including Amazon to launch the COVID-19 Home Testing Service within eight days, helping key workers return to work in hospitals, schools and other sectors; Murphy has said the team worked split shifts around the clock.⁠[5][5]

On September 8, 2020, the technology services group The Panoply announced the acquisition of Difrent for a total initial consideration of £8.8 million, comprising £4 million in cash and £4.8 million in shares, with an earn-out period. At the time about 75% of Difrent’s revenue came from health and social care, with clients including NHSX, the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHSBSA, Public Health England and the World Health Organization; its total unaudited revenue for the year to March 31, 2020, was £7.4 million.⁠[1][1][3][1][1][1]

Murphy said three different companies had approached Difrent about a buy-out over the previous 12 months, and that she chose The Panoply because the two shared values and a mission. After the acquisition Difrent became part of TPXimpact (formerly The Panoply), and she continued as Difrent’s chief executive.⁠[1][4][4]

On November 9, 2025, The Venture RoomThe Venture RoomThe Venture Room is a UK entrepreneurial media brand centered on the YouTube channel @theventureroom. Through long-form interviews with founders and street interviews such as “Asking Millionaires How They Got Rich?”, it presents entrepreneurs’ stories and advice to aspiring business owners, and runs an entrepreneur community and brand partnerships.Open the full entry released an episode of street interviews filmed in Knightsbridge, London, in which Murphy was one of the interviewees. She said that in healthcare she “built the NHS app,” and later owned a company that designed and built services for government and healthcare, which never took outside investment; she said in the episode that she received 13.3 million when she sold her last company, and that she built and sold an eight-figure company in a thousand days.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

Murphy is the founder and chief executive of The Grafter. She has said that when her first business was sold, preparation had started too late and value was left on the table; her second, Difrent, exited for £13.3 million in just over 1,000 days, but no one helped her with the human side of the process, such as uncertainty and trade-offs, so she built the service she wished she had had. The Grafter serves B2B founders with revenue of about £3 million to £30 million, with mentors who have themselves sold businesses (called “Exiteers”) guiding preparation for growth, fundraising and exit; as of October 2026 it had worked with more than 50 founders.⁠[7][7][7][7][7][8][7][7]

“Double down in a certain area and be the expert in your area.” Asked how she would make her first million if she started again, Murphy said she would productize the service so that she could scale it and go large (at 04:36 in the video).⁠[6]

“Be surrounded by the sort of people you want to become.” She said this was the one thing that changed everything for her; many people simply don’t want to put a shift in, but building a company is genuinely hard work that demands real commitment (at 04:45 in the video).⁠[6][6][6]

The Grafter: Official website: https://thegrafter.com/ (opens in a new window).⁠[8]