Personal Journey
I have always been interested in business but focussed academically on maths and science graduating from Imperial College in 1984. I took a mis-step by taking an accounting job but this led me to understand the power and future of IT in business. Having to program in Cobol was not much fun and did not allow me to pursue my interest in business. But then I discovered SQL – way more powerful and a chance to nose into the business via whatever I could find in the data. Also a chance to be my own boss as nobody else understands much about what I was doing !
I got online in 1996 and loved what I found – the world from my bedroom. I quit my day job in 1997 to triple my pay by going contracting as a data analyst. In 1999 I got excited enough by the dot com boom to quit, raise £500k and launch an internet startup. It failed epicly with zero revenue. I teamed up with Brother and his Wife resulting in an array of ideas and businesses. Ultimately two worked out well – BirthdayAlarm and Bebo which sold to AOL in 2008 for a lot of cash.
Since then I have made about 20 angel investments, with a strong focus on fintech since 2012 – sonovate, bton, onbord and crunch.
Role and Value at Finxone
As our chairman Paul is overseeing the management team’s execution, and growth in the vision we all share and believe in. Whilst non-executive Paul’s wisdom and insight is welcome in many areas of our business, as he has an incredible track record in investment and leadership team coaching.
In his own words….
Finxone is the place where I finally get to work closely with a small team of people that genuinely and deeply believe in the power and benefits of open and transparent collaboration – in terms of role satisfaction and ultimately financially. I get to apply many of my key lifetime learnings for the benefit of the team and its delivery of the finxone vision.