Building POC. Gearing up to come out of stealth.

Stocky & Dee was born during Covid19 lockdown restrictions. In a short space of time it has expanded to have sold thousands of collars, leads, harnesses and blankets to people all over the world.My role as chair is to support the leadership in delivering strategic, mission led expansion. It's a brand with purpose and a fantastic line of high quality, long lasting products in a rapidly growing market.

Zumo is a B2B digital assets infrastructure engineered with a focus on sustainability and trust. It enables financial institutions and enterprises to effortlessly embed digital assets via a simple API, and unlock the potential of their brand in web3.As Commercial Director and the first full time employee focussed on this side of the business, I was responsible for working with speciality teams to:- research positioning in the market- create a brand to align with the target market- build out product offerings- talk with prospective clients, learning further what the market is looking for- refine the product offering, required add ons and pricing strategy- nurture major prospective client relationships from exploration stage workshops through to being the selected partner- build a sales pipeline and sales team- map out the end to end client onboarding process- strategise and execute on marketing strategy- build out and execute a partnership strategy- explore further product innovations- build a forward looking strategy to expand into new territories with new product offerings

I supported Rugby New York on an ad-hoc basis. Connecting with potential commercial partners.

As President of Portobello Rugby Club I was passionate about expanding the player numbers from mini to adult and worked on increasing the clubs engagement with the local community. I worked to connect mini and adult sides of the club through getting involved with coaching a mini team and hosting yearly club wide prize giving/AGM. I was lucky enough to work with some highly experienced committee members during this period and learnt a great deal about the challenges of running a community rugby club as well as the relationship between a club and its Union.During my time as President, I led on the exploration of a re-location project aimed at growing the clubs reach in the local community. I brought together a number of local clubs (basketball, football, volleyball, golf and more) in a 'Sports Village' concept. Our thinking was to repurpose part of the local council golf course, maintaining a 9 hole course, whilst building more sports facilities for the local community to take advantage of. The project was still in its consultation phase when Covid struck - during this time, the use of the golf course grew dramatically, due to covid rules, and it was decided we should focus on supporting our clubs in other ways.

During the peak of the initial Covid19 outbreak, whilst stuck in Antigua due to cancelled return flights, I set up Funky Face Mask with Steve Endacott and Shaun Sparks. Steve brought a wealth of travel industry insight and connections and Shaun brought digital marketing expertise. I established suppliers, a sales network and developed an operations process to ensure rapid delivery of high quality masks to businesses, schools and individuals throughout the UK. Funky Face Mask set out with the understanding that masks could be around for some time and we may want to wear something a little more exciting on our face. The business sold thousands of masks to a number of major brands including Jet2 and Aviva.

I worked with Zumo in a consultancy capacity to explore a number of global B2B opportunities for the crypto as a service technology solution built to underpin the Zumo App.

For 2 years I supported a wide variety of startups in developing their concepts and propositions. A fantastic opportunity to work with some motivated entrepreneurs and share some of my learnings from the previous 6 years. I took a lot of enjoyment and learnt a lot from the wide variety of people and concepts I worked on.Projects I worked on included software for monitoring climate change, an app to manage your rental property and grocery delivery.

I supported the commercial development of The Offside Line - Scotland's largest independent Rugby blog - bringing in sponsors such as iZettle and developing unique sponsorship opportunities such as the 'roving reporter' to align with the sponsors requirements.

Make it Social was a social booking/planning/paying API that was simple to integrate and delivered immediate benefit by way of incremental revenues for travel and ticketing companies. We focused on our mission of making it easier for groups to get together and book events.As a non-technical founder, my focus was on ensuring the product is driven towards it's ultimate goal and to deliver on sales and marketing. I led 3 successful investment raises and built the team to 15 people before having to close the business due to insurmountable challenges (a story to share over a drink or two).

Music festival holiday specialists. We took groups of people from the UK to music festivals all over the world. From Tomorrowland to Ultra, we provided tickets, travel and accommodation packages.