Lokblok is a startup focussed on rethinking digital asset security.

GSB Comms are a leading communications consultancy, coaching individuals and teams in a variety of scenarios set up by Richard Garnett, Charlie Simpson and Russell Boulter. Having worked with all 3 founders for the past 15 years, I joined as an Associate in 2017 to add a graphical dimension to the team.

Slide Clinic was established to serve the growing number of clients who were approaching us who needed more than just their slides looking good. Dressing up a poor presentation with beautiful slides doesn't cut it any more. Through our long partnership with Garnett & Simpson we've developed the ability to take any content, no matter how potentially mind-numbingly dry, and turn it on it's head into something that captivates & resonates with their audience.

Co-founder & CEO of Present.me - the video presentation tool for business and education. I'm proud to have been part of a team that produced an amazing, easy to use tool that we thought would solve some of the biggest communication challenges businesses face today. We raised a seed round of £800k and built out our prototype into a fully fledged product. We were awarded various accolades, reaching top 5 in a major UK startup competition, and were the only European company to make it to the finals of the startup competition at SXSW. Despite having very little budget left for marketing, we signed up almost 200,000 users and had over 300,000 video presentations published when we closed the business down. As a team we learned many lessons along the way, and personally, I take a huge amount from this journey into whatever comes next.

With a family that has hospitality in it's blood, it was inevitable that I would stray from the path and be tempted to start a business in this area. We took a run-down old pub in a forgotten part of town, remodelled and redesigned it, and launched it as a modern bar & restaurant called The Glasshouse. I spent the first year managing the business full time to get to know the ropes. After a year of doing that it became abundantly clear that being a designer was a much easier and more lucrative way of paying the bills, so I shifted back into an oversight role with a full time manager replacing me. Despite being the busiest pub in town for a number of years, we couldn't make enough of a return for all the effort involved, so sold the business to another operator just as the recession hit. To sum up: A fun few years and we got out just in time!

Co-founded and ran an e-commerce platform for band merchandise selling t-shirts and other merchandise for some of the biggest artists and clubs in the UK. We developed the capability to fire up and run an official branded merchandise store in a matter of days, massively reducing the cost for bands to be able to participate in online sales. Eventually sold to Firebrand Live, a global merchandising agency.

We founded Wingnut to deliver 'new media' to traditional agencies who had demand from clients but no in-house capabilities . We specialised in presentation production, video production, CD Rom authoring, web design and video encoding for web. I left to focus on building a web based business.