Where do we begin? Maybe let’s start in 1983.

I’m nine and dressed like one of the “Stranger Things” kids. My late Dad was an electronics engineer turned salesman. He spent most of every week clocking up hundreds of miles around the UK in his sales rep Vauxhall Cavalier. Knocking on doors, working for a series of big electronics companies, selling to the emerging British computer industry. Work asked Dad to trial an early home computer, which actually turned out to be a large office HP machine which took two people to lift it. So there we were, on an ordinary housing estate near the old Doc Martens shoe factory in Northamptonshire, and this computing beast occupied a whole corner of our spare room. We were the first family in the area to have a computer and friends and neighbours would literally come and visit to see it. The future had arrived.

The computer could add up my Dad’s expenses – but only after a few hours warming up. More fun was its simple version of Pac-Man, which we played on its mobile-phone-sized screen. One day Dad showed me how to code a few lines in BASIC. After some trial and error, I managed to write a diary application for my Dad’s appointments. Then for Christmas in maybe 1984 we got a ZX Spectrum, and early video games and coding became new passions.

I came down to London from the Midlands in 1992 for university. I got a place at City, University of London, well known for its business school. My London adventures had started. I studied economics as my major but with computer science and philosophy as my first year minors. I’d spend time in the computer lab in the early 90s, learning about this strange new thing on green screens called the “World Wide Web”. I’d talk online by embryonic email with students all over the world, whom I never met in person. Outside my studies, art, music and club culture became my great passions and took all of my available hours. Then it was time to get a “proper job”. Chartered accountancy beckoned, naturally.

I started in audit in the traditional fashion. It didn’t take long for the audit folks to decide that I wasn’t really one of them. I was fortunate that a young corporate finance partner gave me a chance. I worked on small-scale capital-raisings and buyouts and got to combine my interest in technology with my finance skills. My first tech deal in about 1997 aged 23 was raising £3m of venture capital from a major British family office for an amazing Cambridge based robotics business. I loved the buzz of deal-making and was hooked.  

I qualified as a chartered accountant in the autumn of 1998 and not long after, I moved into investment banking. In my mid-twenties I was working on the stock market flotations of young tech and internet businesses all around Europe. There were weeks when I woke in a different European capital city every day. Hard work but hugely stimulating. I felt that I was part of something. Tech x Finance, in the mix.

I worked my way up and through the ranks, making Managing Director at the young age of 33, responsible for running a global technology sector team in a venerable major European investment bank.

After doing the same role in various organisations, I began my portfolio career at the start of 2023. I’m really fortunate to be successful in a career I relish. And this next chapter is only just beginning…

Back to Insight