Mark Ashworth Email & Phone Number

United Kingdom

Bourne End, Buckinghamshire, Gb

Expana is a high-growth, high profit organisation providing data into the food industry. Expana's investors are Five Arrows Principal Investments, part of the Rothschild group, and Synova.

Makude manages a small number of investments in private companies. Makude is unregulated, investing only the funds of its three founding partners.

New York, Us

Virti provides a software platform to allow corporate and public bodies to quickly develop bespoke, interactive training solutions for better learning outcomes. Virti's customers include organisations such as diverse as Amazon, HTC and Cedars-Sinai UniversityI was hired by the investor to clean-up all operational and financial aspects of the business and prepare it for high growth. I professionalised the business, hiring in the necessary operational teams and resetting poorly performing functions such as business development and product. I also developed the partnership strategy and supported the CEO in a commercial reset.

Austin, Texas, Us

I led Oracle Data Cloud's Go-to-Market organisations outside of North America.Initially leading a team of ~120 across Europe, Asia and South America, I first brought together the various businesses that made up Oracle Data Cloud but which had not been brought together coherently. At the same time, the business needed to determine its new commercial approach in the wake of EU GDPR and the Cambridge Analytica scandal which impacted its relationship with a key partner. Once settled, my attention turned to opportunities beyond Europe and I led the opening up of programmatic media in Japan, partnering with TrueData to provide suitable targeting data - truly an innovative deal in a nascent market for programmatic media buys. I also spent time championing opportunities for the business in other parts of Asia which culminated in new businesses opening up in India and Korea and an expansion of the footprint in Australia. Staff were also added in Brazil and Mexico and more staff on the ground in Germany to capitalise on local opportunities. My target and achievement was to take a division, International, which was delivering ~ 5% of Oracle Data Cloud (Oracle Advertising) Revenues and expand this to 20%.

New York, Us

Grapeshot delivered cookie-free solutions into the programmatic advertising space. In 2014, Grapeshot was high-potential but slow burning market opportunity delivering a few million in revenue from a mainly UK base with a nascent presence in New York. I was the first of a new leadership team to arrive to realise its true potential. Three and a half years later, revenues had grown 25x and the headcount 5x (across 12 offices in six countries) and the business was sold to Oracle Corporation for a significant 8-figure sum. My responsibilities extended across all aspects of the business, from organisation design and execution (overseeing Human Resources), supporting the Chair and Investor Directors in resetting the executive team, determining commercial structures and inking transformative deals for the company (partnering with the US-based CRO), and of course, overseeing equity and debt fundraisings, Board and investor liaison and commercial property deals. As a builder of operational teams I am always thinking about what is "stage appropriate" - at Grapeshot due to the pace of growth, my thoughts were sometimes out of date before I had committed them to paper! A particular challenge was building a world-class Business Intelligence team to handle trillions of data points, distilling the information from the 100+ integrations into actionable insight. Building the right People approach was also crucial in a fast-paced environment in an industry, media, where tenures are very short and retention limited.Grapeshot was acquired by Oracle Data Cloud in May 2018. I was retained post-acquisition to support the transition and then to lead International for Oracle Data Cloud (later Oracle Advertising). This comprised operations in the UK, Europe, Latin America and across Asia.

A business with a long history, Germains went through a transformation during my time there, opening up its technology to new markets and delivering increased growth and profitability. Amongst other things, I scoped and delivered two new market entry plans into challenging new markets to realise upside and worked through investment plans for new research and manufacturing facilities.

Cambridge, Gb

I was part of the successful leadership team at FTSE250 business, Domino Printing Sciences plc. Domino was going through a period of inorganic growth, adding product capability and distribution channels and I led on nine acquisitions and one divestment. I rose quickly at Domino becoming CFO for Europe overseeing 10+ subsidiaries across Europe, manufacturing and R&D capability in the UK and the global sales and distribution channels (1,000 staff) leading a direct team of 30.

Gb

Working in Transaction Services and Corporate Finance I worked on a number of successful venture vapital fundraises, Due Diligence projects (buy and sell-side), Strategy Work and other Capital Markets work.I qualified in Audit (2001) and am a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (FCA, ICAEW)