Moderaci started with me being pretty bad at finding mine.
In January 2024, I was training hard, sleeping poorly and carrying a growing level of fatigue that I wasn't doing a particularly good job of addressing.
I was interested in performance. I wanted to train better, achieve more and keep pushing forward. But eventually the obvious contradiction became difficult to ignore: constantly asking more from myself wasn't making me perform better. I was running myself down.
At the same time, there was another feeling that was harder to define. I had always wanted to build something of my own, and I'd reached the point where not trying felt scarier than failing. There was this nagging sense that if I didn't finally commit to building something I genuinely cared about, perhaps I never would.
Those two things eventually collided.
That was the beginning of Moderaci.
From performance to recovery
Moderaci didn't actually begin with sleep supplements.
One of my earliest ideas was an electrolyte product aimed at training and performance. This was before electrolyte powders seemed to be absolutely everywhere - so perhaps I was onto something.
Unfortunately, figuring out how to package the thing was another matter.
But the more interesting development was happening in how I thought about performance itself.
My background in personal training had taught me to think about how people could exercise better, become stronger and progress towards physical goals. Initially, I approached Moderaci from a similar direction: how can we help people do more?
Eventually I became much more interested in the opposite question:
What if we helped people recover better from everything they were already doing?
Training is only useful if you can recover from it. Productivity becomes pretty meaningless when you're exhausted. And trying to continually push performance without looking after the foundations underneath it eventually catches up with you.
For me, one of those foundations was sleep.
And that shift — from continually pushing forwards to also looking at what restores us — changed the direction of Moderaci.
Below: Early mockup of what would soon become Overnight Balance. 
Why “Moderaci”?
The name itself comes from two ideas: moderation and chi.
Moderation represents the idea of finding the right amount - not necessarily doing less, but finding an equilibrium that can actually be sustained.
Chi came from the Eastern concept of energy and balance.
Even the slightly unusual spelling of Moderaci was deliberate. I wanted the brand to sit somewhere between Eastern and Western approaches to wellbeing.
Many of the ingredients that fascinated me had histories stretching back through traditions such as Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine. The philosophy became one of respecting where these ingredients came from while asking modern questions about them.
What does the research actually show? What remains uncertain? Is it safe? Is the proposed mechanism plausible? Is the dose sensible? And, most importantly, is this actually useful to somebody in real life?
That meeting point between tradition, evidence and everyday usefulness still shapes how I think about Moderaci today.
Find Your Balance
Over time, those ideas condensed into three words:
Find Your Balance.
To me, life is an intricately balanced structure.
Sleep, movement, nutrition, work, relationships, stress, recovery and routine all interact. We rarely get every part right at once, and I don't think we need to.
But sometimes a few small things slipping out of place can have surprisingly large consequences for everything sitting above them.
Moderaci is about tending to those foundations.
My own imbalance happened partly because of ambition. I'm someone who likes pursuing things, training hard and setting myself goals. And I've realised that the people who care deeply about performance can sometimes be particularly good at pushing themselves out of balance.
But you don't need to be an athlete, entrepreneur or obsessive self-optimiser to experience that.
Maybe work has become relentless. Maybe you've spent the evening looking after your children and finally have an hour to yourself. Maybe your routine has disappeared. Maybe you're studying, working shifts, caring for somebody else or simply going through one of those periods where ordinary life demands more than usual.
Life has a habit of pulling us out of balance.
Moderaci exists to create tools that can make finding your way back a little easier.
Why supplements?
Before starting Moderaci, I worked as a personal trainer.
Something I loved about personal training was the idea of giving people the knowledge and confidence to help themselves.
I couldn't train everybody. I couldn't be there every evening telling somebody it was time to start winding down or every morning helping them build a better routine.
But perhaps I could create something that played a small part in that process.
That's how I've come to think about supplements.
I don't believe a capsule can replace sleep, movement, nutrition or healthy routines. Nor do I particularly like the idea of supplements being presented as shortcuts around those things.
I'd rather build products that fit into the routines that help people look after themselves.
And sometimes the routine surrounding a product can matter too.
Why I created Overnight Balance
Overnight Balance grew directly from my own experience with poor sleep, fatigue and recovery.
I didn't want to create something whose entire proposition was effectively: take this and get knocked out.
I became much more interested in the process that happens before sleep.
Turning things off. Slowing down. Creating consistency. Giving your body and mind repeated signals that the active part of the day is ending.
So I started thinking about Overnight Balance as three things:
a prompt, a primer and an anchor.
A prompt to begin winding down.
A formulation built around ingredients selected for their roles within the wider picture of relaxation, sleep and recovery.
And an anchor, something consistent within an evening routine that can become familiar over time.
That doesn't mean two capsules magically fix poor sleep.
If I'm taking Overnight Balance and then scrolling on my phone until 2am, I've rather missed the point.
The aim is to put the product within a wider ritual: dim the lights, put the day down, take Overnight Balance, make a cup of tea, read, stretch, whatever winding down looks like for you.
Take your sleep into your own hands rather than treating it as something that simply happens to you.
Then came Ashwagandha
Ashwagandha fascinated me for a slightly different reason.
Here was a plant with a long history of traditional use in Ayurveda that had become enormously popular in modern Western supplements, and, in the process, had accumulated an equally enormous amount of marketing around it.
At the time, I was also dealing with a lot of chronic stress myself.
I liked the idea of creating something simpler than Overnight Balance: a single ingredient that could fit into someone's routine during the day or evening without requiring the full Overnight Balance formulation.
Moderaci Ashwagandha therefore uses 500mg of Ashwagandha root powder per capsule.
The choice of root powder was deliberate. Rather than concentrating the plant around selected constituents, I wanted a relatively minimally processed approach that remained closer to the broader root material associated with Ashwagandha's traditional use.
That doesn't make root powder inherently superior to an extract. They're different approaches, and the science around Ashwagandha continues to develop.
And that brings me to something important about Moderaci.
If the science changes, so will we
I graduated from the University of Nottingham with a BSc in Biochemistry in 2025.
I'm proud of that background, but I don't want “formulated by a biochemist” to become a decorative badge that means you aren't allowed to question what we say.
I'd probably have started Moderaci regardless of what was written on my degree certificate.
Where my scientific education has proved particularly valuable is in giving me the foundations to understand biological mechanisms, interrogate research and become comfortable with a very important phrase:
We don't know yet.
Before committing to the first Moderaci formulations, I spent around six months researching ingredients, formulations and the science surrounding them.
Since then, the learning hasn't stopped.
I've had to become a formulator, procurement manager, finance controller, salesperson, ecommerce manager, marketer and content creator - often learning what I'm doing shortly before needing to do it.
And there are things I've got wrong.
Building a business means getting things wrong
Our Turmeric product didn't work commercially.
I waited far too long to properly embrace Amazon.
For a long time, I was afraid to post online and put myself behind the brand.
And perhaps my biggest mistake was not believing in Moderaci when it was small in the way I do now that I know our products have genuinely become part of people's lives.
I don't want to rewrite the history of the company and pretend there was a perfect masterplan.
There wasn't.
Moderaci has changed because I've learned.
And I want that willingness to change to remain part of the company as it grows.
If better evidence changes our understanding of an ingredient, we should respond to it. If customers tell us something isn't working, we should listen. If there's a better way to formulate, manufacture, package or explain something, we should be prepared to improve.
What makes a Moderaci product?
There are a few principles I don't want that growth to compromise.
Safety comes first. Something being natural or traditional doesn't automatically make it appropriate for everybody.
It needs to be useful. I don't want a catalogue full of obscure ingredients simply so we can say we sell them.
It should be accessible. If I genuinely believe something can be useful to a broad group of people, I don't want to unnecessarily gatekeep it behind an enormous price tag.
We should tell you what you're actually buying. Supplement labels can become a competition for the biggest-looking number. I'd rather explain the formulation properly and let people make an informed choice.
And increasingly, I want Moderaci to become better at understanding where its ingredients come from. Traceability and sustainability are areas I want us to develop further as the company grows.
We're not perfect at all of these things yet.
Part of building Moderaci publicly is being able to say that.
More than supplements
I don't know exactly what Moderaci will look like ten years from now.
Strangely, I find that exciting rather than frightening.
We'll continue developing supplements and formulations. Sleep may become the area we're best known for. Or the company may develop in directions I haven't anticipated yet.
I want it to become a collection of useful tools for the small gaps and frictions that get in the way of people's wellbeing. Sometimes that might be a supplement.
One day it could be the right eye mask for sleep. A tea built around an evening ritual. Scents associated with winding down. Something supporting training and recovery. Perhaps even technology.
The format matters less to me than the question behind it:
Does this genuinely help somebody get where they're trying to go?
Better sleep. Less stress. Better recovery. A physical goal. More energy to spend on the people and things that matter to them.
That's the destination.
So, who is Moderaci?
Right now, we're still a small independent British brand.
And I actually think that's something worth preserving.
I take the products myself.
I read the research. I work on the website. I look at the feedback. I obsess over the packaging. I write articles like this one. And I'm still figuring plenty of it out as I go.
Moderaci isn't being built around the idea that anybody can optimise themselves into a perfectly balanced human being.
I'm certainly not one.
It's built around the opposite observation.
We're human.
We have circadian rhythms. We develop habits. We respond to routines and familiarity. We go through periods where we push too hard, sleep too little, work too much or simply have more demanded of us than usual.
Balance isn't somewhere you arrive and stay forever.
It's something you continually tend to.
A small adjustment here. A better routine there. Looking after the foundations before the structure above them begins to wobble.
That's what Moderaci means to me.
And if something we create can make one of those adjustments a little easier, then we're doing what I started the company to do back in January 2024.
Help people help themselves.
Find Your Balance.
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