my professional profile

I  started my working life with Price Waterhouse, having graduated from Sheffield University with a First-Class degree in Accounting & Mathematics. After eight years with PW, I left to set up my own consulting business which I sold to an IT Services company. I subsequently studied full-time for an MBA to broaden my business education.

Thereafter I spent twelve years as FD, MD and then CEO of a FTSE plc, and have started, grown, and exited three of my own startup ventures. For the last twenty years I have rolled my sleeves up as a ‘hands on, hands-in’ pragmatic investor, consultant and non-exec director working with over forty entrepreneurs and founders to nurture their startup ventures. In this time, I have worked alongside investors of all shapes and sizes – Angels, Venture Capital and Private Equity. My experience is primarily in the services and technology sectors.

I’ve also held voluntary board positions on arts, education and charitable organisations. I was a founder Trustee and Governor of Darwen Aldridge Community Academy (part of The Aldridge Foundation) where the specialism is Entrepreneurship. I am a member of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, and a Freeman of the City of London awarded for my voluntary activities – but haven’t yet taken up the opportunity this affords to drive a herd of sheep across London Bridge.

For over ten years I was an accredited coach and mentor on the NWDA High Growth programme, the National Growth Accelerator and Access to Finance programmes. I also worked with the Technology Strategy Board and Innovation UK. I was a Course Tutor on the Goldman Sachs 10000 SME Programme with Aston University and Said Business School, Oxford University.

I have a research and teaching interest in entrepreneurship, and delivered entrepreneurial learning modules as curriculum designer, lecturer and tutor on MBA and startup incubator programmes at Manchester, Lancaster and Sheffield University Business Schools. I was co-founder, co-creator and tutor on the Master of Enterprise post-graduate degree programme at Manchester University.

My final personal startup venture was as founder and leader of thestartupfactory.tech, a startup incubator. After five years, I stepped back from this business in 2022 and now focus on providing ‘Co-Founder as a Service’ to startup solo and co-founders with consulting, mentoring and coaching support on a bootstrapping basis.

Currently I am working with the following organisations, as an investor and ‘co-founder:

• Nivo : a fintech providing an encrypted instant messaging and IDV app to enhance  connectivity, security and experience between financial service providers and their customers. We are a team of fifteen.

• Invertase : delivering improved software developer experiences via platform, sandbox, and tooling solutions, underpinned by an open-source philosophy. Invertase operates predominantly in the flutter eco-system with a globally distributed team of twelve.

• FreeUP : an IoT device based venture providing real time water quality monitoring at scale via an innovative device incorporating hardware, software, and data-as-a-service.

• Co-Perceptuo : an intuitive application platform enabling CTOs to generate data driven insights to provide for improved decision making and business cases for digital change. An embryonic business of ‘hands on’ two-founders.

• Fuzzy Labs : use open-source MLOps to build, deploy and productionise AI models in the fastest and most consistent way, via consulting support and tooling solutions. A team of fifteen, predominantly based in Manchester.

a bit more about ‘me’

First memory Watching the Apollo XI moon landing on our black-and-white TV, sat on my grandad’s knee. Maybe that’s where my fascination with everything to do with space comes from. I’m hoping for a call from Elon and getting on his Space X rocket to Mars!

What would your ‘Mastermind’ specialist subject be? It would either be the history of Burnley FC or Joy Division’s music and lyrics, both have dominated my life for many years.

In which time and place, other than today, would you like to live? Renaissance Florence – to be in the city when the Medicis, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Botticelli and Machiavelli were around must have been amazing.

What TV show could you not live without? University Challenge. I try to get fifty points in each episode of the quiz, don’t manage that often! I also never miss Gone Fishing with Paul Whitehouse and Bob Mortimer. I couldn’t live without BBC Radio 4: I have an addiction to the Shipping Forecast.

Which public figure do you look up to? I don’t tend to look up to any public figure, but of the people I have seen in my lifetime, I most respect Tony Benn and Barack Obama.Benn was learned, erudite, witty, funny. Obama was a man of honesty and integrity, which was highlighted by the contrast of what followed him. I just wish there were more like them.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? I have received sage advice about the virtues of patience several times. Unfortunately, I have never followed any of them.

What’s currently bugging you? The fatalism that underpins the persistence of homelessness and lack of spending on public health, education and the arts. It can be ended, and I yearn for a government that will commit itself to doing so.

What single thing would make your life better?

Getting to bed earlier. I’m an owl and frequently dawdle until midnight.

When were you happiest? I’m generally a glass half-full person, optimistic, positive and happy all the time. I’d say I’m happiest when I’m with family and friends having a laugh and preferably on a picnic near the sea with an indecent amount of homemade sausage rolls.

In another life, what job might you have chosen? An astronaut, but ‘accountant’ has before that in the handbook at the University Careers’ Service. Nowadays I’d love to be a lighthouse keeper, but as all of the 160 UK lighthouses are now automatic, I’d settle for being an archaeologist pottering around heritage sites.