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Mike Dobinson is a Brighton-based entrepreneur who moved from cocktail bars to tech, founding BarByte and supporting comedian wife Maisie Adam.
For many people searching online, he first appears as the “Maisie Adam husband” they have seen mentioned in interviews or tagged on social media. Yet behind the search term “Mike Dobinson” is a Brighton-linked bar manager turned software founder, whose story reflects a modern career change from hospitality to technology. As the profile of stand-up comedian Maisie Adam has grown, curiosity about the partner behind her has steadily increased too.
This biography looks at who Mike Dobinson is in his own right: his roots in Brighton’s bar scene, the leap into coding, the birth of BarByte, and the low-key but important role he plays in the life of a very public performer.
Who Is Mike Dobinson?
Mike Dobinson is a British entrepreneur strongly associated with Brighton, England, where he is widely reported to have lived and worked for much of his adult life. Professionally, he is best known as a hospitality specialist who reinvented himself as a developer and now works as a Brighton-based tech founder. He is the driving force behind BarByte, a young software venture aimed at making life easier for bar and restaurant teams.
To the wider public, he is most commonly recognised as the Maisie Adam partner who became her husband in 2023. Fans searching for “Maisie Adam husband” will usually find his name attached to wedding photos and affectionate stories shared by the comedian. Even so, people close to the couple often emphasise that he has his own career path and ambitions, rather than simply being known through his wife’s success.
Brighton Roots and Early Life in Hospitality
Online profiles consistently place Mike Dobinson in and around Brighton from early adulthood, drawn to the city’s busy nightlife and strong bar culture. Instead of following a purely academic or corporate route, he embedded himself in the hospitality world, starting in front-of-house roles where the main tests were Friday and Saturday nights rather than written exams.
It is widely reported that he worked for several well-known bar and restaurant brands, including venues under the Loch Fyne Seafood & Grill, Las Iguanas and Be At One banners. These roles, typically in high-volume city-centre sites, gave him first-hand experience of the pressures faced by bartenders and managers: stock checks at closing time, staff rotas that never quite pleased everyone, and customer expectations that only seemed to rise.
Several sources also describe a lengthy period as a bar manager at Shuffle Bar & Kitchen in Brighton, where he is believed to have spent a number of years running day-to-day operations. In that setting, he would have been responsible not just for serving drinks, but for hiring and training staff, overseeing promotions, and ensuring the venue hit its financial targets. Even where exact dates are unclear, the overall picture is of someone who climbed the ladder from bartender to trusted venue leader within the local scene.
From Cocktails to Code: Moving into Tech
After years of working late nights and long shifts, Dobinson is said to have become increasingly interested in the systems that sit behind hospitality – the booking tools, the staffing apps and the spreadsheets that many managers still rely on. Seeing the same operational problems recur from one bar to another, he started to ask whether better software could genuinely transform how hospitality teams work.
In his early thirties, he made a decisive move “from hospitality to technology” by undertaking full-stack developer training, reportedly through an intensive bootcamp programme such as Northcoders. There he would have been exposed to modern web technologies and frameworks, including JavaScript, React, PostgreSQL, Firebase and Express, alongside core concepts like version control and test-driven development.
The key point in most accounts is not just the list of tools he learned, but the broader idea of a career change in his thirties. Rather than staying in a comfort zone he knew well, Mike Dobinson chose to start again as a junior developer, applying the resilience and problem-solving skills honed in busy bars to an entirely new industry. That combination of real-world experience and fresh technical training laid the groundwork for his next venture.
BarByte: Building Tools for the Hospitality Industry
BarByte emerged as a direct response to the challenges he had experienced on the bar floor. Positioned as a hospitality-focused software platform, it aims to take some of the friction out of running pubs, cocktail bars and casual dining venues. While detailed features are still evolving, BarByte is commonly described as tackling core pain points such as staff scheduling, shift communication, operational checklists and aspects of customer experience.
Crucially, BarByte is not just an idea on paper. Official records show that BarByte Ltd is a registered private limited company in the UK, with its office based in Brighton and its business classified under software development. Those filings list “Michael Dobinson” as an active director, confirming his formal role at the head of the company.
What is not yet public are specifics such as revenue, staff numbers or client figures. As with many early-stage tech ventures, BarByte is still in the building and testing phase, and hard commercial data tends to be closely held. However, the combination of his long stretch in hospitality and his more recent technical training makes it clear that BarByte is rooted in lived experience rather than a passing trend. It is an example of a BarByte founder trying to build tools for the very industry that shaped his working life.
Relationship with Maisie Adam: Partner Behind the Comedian
Alongside his own career, the story of Mike Dobinson is closely intertwined with that of his wife. Maisie Adam is an English stand-up comedian known for her energetic delivery, autobiographical material and appearances on major UK panel shows. Television audiences will recognise her from series such as “Mock the Week”, “8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown”, “Have I Got News for You”, “QI” and “The Last Leg”, as well as her live tours and festival performances.
Publicly available accounts indicate that the couple dated for several years before announcing their engagement in December 2021. In June 2023, they married in a ceremony linked in timing to Adam’s appearance at Soccer Aid 2023, leading to light-hearted coverage of her “wedding one day, football the next” weekend. Their home life is generally understood to be based in or around Brighton, fitting with both his work history and her frequent references to the city in interviews and routines.
Despite the increased attention that comes with being the Maisie Adam husband, Mike Dobinson appears to prefer a low profile. He does not court media coverage, rarely gives interviews, and is mostly glimpsed through Adam’s social-media posts or occasional mentions in podcasts and stand-up material. The impression is of a partner who is supportive and present, but not interested in building a celebrity profile of his own.
Age, Net Worth and Other Personal Details (With Caveats)
Because he serves as a company director, a small amount of personal information about Mike Dobinson is available in the public domain. Companies House records list his full name as Michael Dobinson and give his month and year of birth as April 1993. That places him in his early thirties, aligning with the narrative of a career change in his thirties from bar management to software development.
When it comes to net worth, there are no official figures. Some online biography sites make broad estimates, typically suggesting a combined value in the low- to mid-six-figure range based on his years of management-level hospitality work and the potential value of a tech startup. However, these are clearly labelled as estimates rather than audited numbers, and they should be treated with caution rather than as precise statements of his wealth.
Other aspects of his private life remain largely undisclosed. There is no confirmed public information about his detailed family background, exact salary, or long-term financial arrangements. Likewise, the couple have not made any formal announcements about children. The absence of this information appears deliberate, reflecting a conscious choice to draw a line between public careers and private life.
Personality, Values and Why His Story Matters
Across various profiles and interviews that touch on his life, Mike Dobinson tends to be described in similar terms: hard-working, grounded and quietly ambitious. Those who highlight his journey often point to his willingness to step away from a familiar industry, retrain, and take the risk of founding a new company. Rather than seeking attention, he seems more focused on building something useful for a sector he understands deeply.
There is also a broader theme that explains why so many people are interested in his story. In an era when many workers are rethinking their paths, his move from hospitality into technology illustrates how skills from one field can be repurposed in another. The patience required to deal with difficult customers, the organisational discipline of running a bar, and the leadership needed to manage teams all carry over into software design and startup life.
Conclusion
Taken together, the story of Mike Dobinson is one of quiet reinvention rather than overnight transformation. He spent years learning the realities of hospitality from the inside before choosing to retrain as a developer and launch BarByte, a platform shaped by that experience. At the same time, he has built a life with a high-profile comedian while deliberately keeping his own profile modest. For readers searching for “Maisie Adam husband” or “Maisie Adam partner”, his journey shows how it is possible to support a public figure, pursue your own ambitions, and bridge the gap between bars and technology in modern Brighton.