The past two years have caused no end of chaos and disruption. Yet, the UK’s entrepreneurial spirit seems unphased. According to Companies House, almost 80 new businesses were created every hour in the first half of 2021. Despite the challenges, new ideas continue to flourish – and long may that continue. However, many businesses don’t make it through their first year. Sometimes the idea doesn’t work in practice, the business model is flawed or the market fit simply isn’t there. But more often than not, businesses fail because they cannot raise the capital they need to continue. According to research, nearly 2 in 5 businesses fold for this reason alone.

I left my old job on a whim!

Well, not really on a whim but pretty close – I left after serving a month’s notice with no clear plan on what to do next other than wanting to work on something with purpose.

Why we say “f**k dating apps, 6 days of the week”.

Monday 3rd: New match!

Tuesday 4th: Hi, how are you?

Wednesday 12th: Hey! I’m good thanks.

Thursday 20th: Sorry, been busy! What’s up?

Friday 21st: Nothing much! Would be great to meet up sometime.

Saturday 22nd: Sure, how about next week?

Sunday 28th: …

Monday 31st: New match!

…look familiar?

What were your biggest learnings from your experiences with Lovefilm,Secret Escapes and Oxalyst?

Those three businesses have very little in common, except that they all took inspiration from something successful and tried to replicate the model somewhere else.
Two of the three of them have proved very successful.
It’s hard to distill the learnings definitively but I would say that people/culture and strategy are the two defining characteristics of long term leaders. LOVEFiLM and SecretEscapes had them, Oxalyst didn’t quite.

Play a little game with me.

Think of the last purchase you made online, that was important to you. Maybe a holiday you booked, a hotel, a new TV, even booking a restaurant.

Have you got something in mind?

Now ask yourself – how much did you enjoy the decision-making experience on a 1-10 scale?

Even more importantly, how content were you with the outcome on a 1-10 scale?

What were you biggest learnings at Jefferies?
Jefferies was a great learning experience for me. Whether you agree with the banking culture or not (most people don’t), you tend to understand your true self a little bit better when it’s 3am and you’re sleep deprived trying to push through a 200-pages presentation, or a 50-tabs financial model. But my biggest learning from those 3 years was understanding that I wanted to be much more involved in the company’s growth stories, and not just watching them from the outside. I understood I wanted to be part of their journey much earlier on, and have as much positive impact as I could on the trajectory of the company.

Getting the advocacy we need from the UK Government to support its home-grown tech champions like Lifebit on the global stage. This is seen in the public sector here in the UK, but on the whole the UK has a lot to learn from the US, who actively lobby on behalf of their national champions. Right now our company is also expanding rapidly to match our growing client-base, finding the right talent to grow our team is challenging, there is so much growth in the life sciences and tech sectors at present which means competing with many other leading companies to recruit the best talent.

• What were your biggest learnings at Boston Consulting Group?

I joined BCG at a senior consultant level, having 5 years of experience in consumer products previously. I joined the Financial Services practice (at my request – I wanted experience outside of consumer), and quickly realised I was way out of my depth on industry knowledge. I had to rely on over-delivering on client experience, process management, and just generally being liked by colleagues, clients, and managers; these things saved me.

When I started Envoy in 2013, I knew a secret that few did: workplaces lacked user-friendly, experience-centered tools.

Working at Google in the early days, we had access to a lot of amazing user-friendly internal tools, built by people in the company. We had applications that let us see the bus schedule, find nearby meeting rooms and printers, navigate the campus and where everyone was seated. We even had an experience-focused kiosk for visitors to check in when they arrived on campus. Not surprising, companies like Apple and Facebook built very similar applications for themselves. Why? Because nothing with any decent UX was available in-market. Along with early investors Marc Benioff, Adam D’Angelo, Jeremy Stoppelman, we saw a niche opportunity in workplace tech and set out to change that with Envoy.

What is the future of food? It is the question on the lips of entrepreneurs, investors and those up and down the global food supply chain. From picking to plate, technology is altering how we interact with food. This turn to technology is driven by complex issues such as growing enough food to feed the planet, huge meal wastage, labour shortages and heavy demands from everyone for quicker service of fresher meals that meet complex dietary needs. It is why we are seeing investment into areas like vertical farming, dark kitchens and automation in the dining industry.