Founder first.
Investor second.
Technologist never.
Which is useful when the job is deciding what technology is actually worth buying and building.
The short version.
- 30+ years building and operating businesses.
- 20+ years backing and mentoring founders.
- Started in strategy consulting at Accenture.
- Experience across the UK, UAE, India, Africa and Europe.
- Operator across interiors, property, food, health, technology and other sectors.
- Three years obsessively testing AI in my own businesses.
- Experienced scuba diver. Much less noisy than LinkedIn.
My operating bias.
- Run lean.
- Watch cash.
- Buy less software.
- Hire carefully.
- Automate where it earns the right to exist.
- Ignore theatre.
My technical team knows how to build. My job is to decide what is worth building in the first place.
That judgement comes from years spent worrying about margin, payroll, customer acquisition, people, systems, cash flow and the other unglamorous things that determine whether a business actually works.
Less noise. Better judgement.
Underwater, nobody can send another deck. It is one reason I keep going back.
The same instinct carries into the work: strip away noise, pay attention, and act only when there is something useful to do.
Money and success did not fully satisfy me.
- I still enjoy making money.
- I am simply more interested in what it can be used for.
- I want difficult projects, good people and useful work.
- I want more time underwater.
- I want most of the commercial value created here to go somewhere that matters.
Built. Backed. Learnt from.
Interiors. Property. Food. Health. Technology. Education. Startups. Listed companies. The point is not the sectors. It is having lived through enough different problems to recognise patterns.