Origin story
Thirteen names.
One that stuck.
Extreme Overkill didn't arrive fully formed. It took seven years, nine companies and thirteen names on the Companies House register to get here. This is that paper trail, plus the bits the paperwork leaves out.
01The paper trail
-
2019
The Young Onez Ltd
DissolvedWhere it started. An IT side gig run alongside the day job. It closed at the end of 2020 because it conflicted with the employer I worked for at the time.
Lasted 655 days. Not bad for a first go. -
2020
The Young Onez Ltd (again)
Dormant · dissolvedNew job, no conflict, so the company came straight back: same name, new company number, and a new address after the move to Lincolnshire. It mostly sat on the shelf while the next idea took shape.
Back after 17 days. Some names are hard to let go of. -
2022
Washdyke Farm Ltd
Dormant · dissolvedSet up for farm activities at Washdyke Farm, the place that's now the registered office. The plans never got going, it never really traded, and it closed the following summer alongside the second Young Onez.
271 days. The farm idea stayed an idea. -
2023
AlphaElite Ventures Ltd
DissolvedThe trading company for the next two years, and the one doing the actual work while the paperwork around it got more ambitious.
Renamed The Young Onez Ltd in Nov 2024. Yes, a third time. -
2024
Will Young Ltd & The SweetStay Club Ltd
DissolvedThe holding company era. Will Young Ltd was meant to sit at the top of a proper group structure, with brands like SweetStay, a glamping directory, underneath it. On paper it looked very grown up. In practice it was two lots of filings for one person.
Also: The SweetStay Club Ltd, No. 15442902Both formed and dissolved on the same days. 117 days each. -
2025
ZapYo Ltd
DissolvedHosting and IT work under one company. Renamed WillsWay Ltd in January 2026 as the brands started pulling together, then wound down once everything moved into the company you're looking at now.
Renamed WillsWay Ltd in Jan 2026. -
2025
Willcrest Holdings Ltd
DissolvedHolding company, attempt two. Six months of extra filings, extra accounts and extra cost later, the point made itself: a group structure for a one-person business was, in a word, overkill. Remember that word.
180 days. The moment the penny dropped. -
2026
AuraLink Group Ltd
RenamedOne company to hold everything: no group, no layers. Shortly after registering, it came to light that another business held a trademark for a similar name, so we changed ours promptly rather than trade under a name that could cause confusion.
Renamed after 36 days. Shortest name on the list. -
2026
WillsWay Collective Ltd
RenamedSame company, second name. The brands came together under one roof, and the founder's memoir, I'll Be Escalating This, was published under it. WillsWay Collective carries on as the publishing imprint.
Lasted 79 days, but it's in print forever. -
2026
Extreme Overkill Ltd
ActiveThird name, same company, and the first one that describes how the work is actually done. The unofficial board minutes read: Present: me. Also present: four pints. Motion to rename the company Extreme Overkill: carried unanimously. The official minutes are much duller and properly signed.
Staying put. Same company number since June 2026.
02The experience behind it
The companies were the side project. The day job is where the engineering came from: thirteen years inside UK managed service providers, the businesses other businesses call when their IT breaks.
- 2013Advanced Apprenticeship in IT, Software, Web & Telecoms, passed with Distinction. First job as an IT technician at an MSP.
- 2016Second line engineer: servers, firewalls and phone systems, on site and remote.
- 2018Senior support specialist. Became a 3CX Advanced Certified Engineer and led staff training and documentation.
- 2019MSP support engineer, including Microsoft Teams phone system rollouts. The first Young Onez starts on the side.
- 2021Senior service desk analyst and escalation point across multiple client environments.
- 2022Senior IT engineer: second and third line, acting team lead, and project delivery covering SharePoint migrations, Intune rollouts and client onboarding.
- 2026Extreme Overkill Ltd. The same standards, applied to our own clients and our own tools.
That's where the name comes from. After thirteen years of watching "good enough" fail at 4:55 on a Friday, everything here gets monitoring, backups, documentation and a plain-English explanation as standard. It's also why Teams Recall exists: years of building call reports for clients by hand.
03What all that taught us
One company is enough
Two holding companies proved it. Every extra layer meant more filings, more accounts and more cost, and none of it made the work better for clients.
Name it for what you do
Thirteen names in, the one that stuck describes how the work is done, not what we hoped we'd become.
Fix it properly, once
The same rule that runs the hosting and support. We'd rather build it right than keep patching it, and that now goes for the company too.
Want to work with the company that finally settled on a name? Get in touch.