About

My mission is to help companies in healthcare, healthtech and agetech to commercialise and scale their businesses.

I've been building things since the Internet became commercial and I've been a patient for just as long. That combination; founder instinct and lived experience of serious illness, is what I bring to the companies I work with.

Most recently I sold Living With, a digital health company, now part of LDC-backed Agentis Health Group. Living With was a SaaS platform that helped hospitals and clinics to assess, manage and rehabilitate more patients, in less time, across 25+ conditions. Living With worked with over 40 NHS Trusts and owned the UK's top paid medical app, Squeezy.

Previously, I sold Propagator, a publishing technology platform, to Taylor & Francis
Before that I built and floated digital agency, Syzygy, on the German Stock Exchange with a market cap of €240m
And co-founded Ink Publishing, the world's largest publisher of inflight media (£50m sales)

I am the author of Confessions of an Entrepreneur, published by Pearson, selling 10,000 copies. For two years I presented and mentored on the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses programme.

How to build

Over 25 years, I have demonstrated the ability to build £multi-million technology companies in different industries.

As CEO of digital agency, syzygy, I set out a vision to float the company and over 4 years, built a profitable Pan-European business with revenues of €18m, offices in the UK, Germany and France and 230 staff, and then successfully raised €55m on the Neuer Markt in Germany in Oct 2000 with a valuation of $240million.
Grew INK Publishing from £0 to £48m revenue, securing major global aviation clients. Helping to set the business agenda, as we grew a global business with offices and clients across the world.
Built and exited Living With, a modular digital health platform operating across 40+ NHS Trusts and ICBs
Built and sold Propagator, a publishing technology platform, to Taylor & Francis
Built the UK's top paid medical app, Squeezy

How to make money

A track record of business model reinvention.

As a founding Director of Ink Publishing, we reinvented the contract publishing business model. We offered to produce the magazine for free in return for taking all the advertising revenues, and in doing so, became the world's largest publisher of inflight media.
Coming into Edengene, I repositioned and restructured an unprofitable but highly talented innovation consultancy, providing a new vision and plan, hired new capability, introduced new consulting products, won clients including Coca-Cola, Unilever, GSK and RBS and converted a £0.5m loss into £1.2m profit
As a founder of Propagator, I helped organisations like Bloomsbury Publishing find new ways to make money from their content, including selling the Churchill Archive online and turning the Writers and Artists handbook into a wider editorial services business

How to sell

I love creating, packaging and selling ideas.

Winning £25m of sales as New Business Director at advertising agency, DMB&B
Successfully Successfully selling and marketing syzygy AG for the IPO on the Neuer Markt in 2000 with an offer that was 16x oversubscribed and raised €55m
Winning and overseeing the delivery of £1.5m Boots business at Syzygy
Selling 11 licences to Propagator's publishing technology platform in 12 months
Selling Living With SaaS licences to 40+ NHS Trusts and ICBs

How to innovate

As CEO of Edengene, an innovation consultancy, I helped many companies including Coca-Cola, Unilever, GSK, O2, J&J and Leonard Cheshire to innovate.
Co-founded market research technology company with Jigsaw research. Launched SaaS platform, www.whycatcher.com as an all-in-one, online research solution. Now owned by STRAT7.
Co-founded White label "one stop shop" for legal services (Law in Order) for Corporates and large brands to sell to their customers with legal broker, Kennedy Cater.
I worked as Interim Commercial Director for an innovative start-up, Icomera, the first company in the world to put wireless Internet access on trains.

How to bring change

Plenty of books existed in 2010 about how to start a business, but no-one had shared what it actually felt like. I wrote a book, Confessions of an entrepreneur, published by Pearson, which sold 10,000 copies and turned my entrepreneurial experiences into a unique story about surviving the highs and lows of start-ups (Buy it on Amazon) It was in the WH Smith Top 20 books for 2 months
Bringing real change sometimes means going where others won't - literally. In 1986, as an Oxford student, I co-organised an expedition into Afghanistan to film and document the Soviet war, at a time when almost no Western media was covering it. No-one cared about the war there. I persuaded a Polish friend, Radek Sikorski (later Polish Foreign Minister), to join me. Together we raised £5500. After a serendipitous encounter with MI6, we found ourselves in Peshawar, joining a Mujahideen group going in. Radek was the first person to photograph Stinger missiles in action, winning a World Press Photo award. It's hard to reimagine that world, before the advent of AL Qaeda and ISIS, but it did.
In 2003, before YouTube, I set up On The Frontline, an online video portal to champion freelance cameramen and women worldwide, bringing video news from hidden parts of the world. This early example of citizen news was merged into the Frontline Club, owned by war reporter Vaughan Smith, in 2004.
In 2010 I set up Who Gets My Vote, an online voting platform giving every UK voter an easy means of making an informed voting choice in the 2010 General Election. Who Gets My Vote enabled voters to select the policies that they most cared about and vote on a specific policy statement for each one, without knowing which party was promoting it. We licensed the idea to ITV who ran it during the election, where it received considerable press coverage.

That instinct to go to the uncomfortable, underreported place and make it visible has run through everything since, including building technology for patient groups the NHS hadn't prioritised.

How to think like a patient

I've been a patient for as long as I've been an entrepreneur.

I've lived with ulcerative colitis since I was 18. I understand the trajectory of long-term conditions and how medication sometimes helps and sometimes does the reverse. I was an early user of Azathioprine which then gave me pancreatitis. And I have benefitted from vedolizumab more recently, even with the unexplained side effects of taking multiple drugs in tandem.
A few years ago, Guillain-Barré syndrome hospitalised me for five weeks and forced me to learn to walk again. It was truly scary going from being well to being unable to write or walk within three days
These aren't footnotes. They're the reason I understand, at a visceral level, why digital health products succeed or fail with real patients and why the NHS relationships I built through Living With were grounded in something more than sales technique. When I walk into a clinical conversation, I'm not just the founder. I'm also the patient in the room

How to raise money

I have successfully raised money for different companies in different ways.

IPO: raised €55m for Syzygy on the Neuer Markt in Germany in Oct 2000 with a valuation of €240million
Angel investment: raised angel investment in multiple companies including Living With and Law in Order
Private equity: with eSubstance that became Ink Publishing
Corporate investment: WPP investment in Syzygy