Entrepreneurs rate me as one of the best mentors they work with. Whether they are venture-funded entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs at big corporates or bootstrapping founders they give me the thumbs up.
I’ve been an entrepreneur for 20 years. So I know what you face. Every day I’ve been reading and learning. So you don’t have to. I see the world differently and when I share that my clients capitalise on it.
You want more? Easy to work with, charming, enthusiastic, passionate and full of energy. Degrees (ish) in philosophy, engineering and business. Awkwardly balanced between anarchism, monasticism and exploration.
We’re in the largest business revolution for 300 years. Everything is changing. My mission is to make that change a good one for millions of businesses
New business models provide a lifeline for tens of millions of employees and the prospect of sustained economic growth in the industrial heartlands of the Midlands where I grew up.
They enable sustainability and positive psychology that will have an impact on future generations. I’m discovering the rules that drive powerful business models and sharing them as widely as I can
I’m a strategist who helps business leaders conceptualise and then design new business models based on their ideas of what their industry really needs.
I’m an engineer by training, with a philosophy degree and an MBS from Warwick Business School. For the last 15 years, I have been building and advising high growth businesses.
Running a business is tough, especially when you are trying to make a difference, and not just keeping it on a steady course. For the last 15 years, I have been building and advising high growth businesses
I learned this the hard way, starting my first business in 2007. We had 18 great months before the impact of the financial crisis hit us. Then I faced a succession of hammer blows over the next 6 years that tested me to the limit.
Many of the startups that I worked in (or started) after that were even tougher. It was a constant struggle to build a system that could overcome whatever the world and the market threw at us. Funding not coming through, premises burning down or being broken into, and everything stolen.
Internally we often didn’t know what we were doing, who it was for, or why what we were making mattered to anyone. If that sounds like a catalogue of disasters, it was.
At the same time, there were so many triumphs as we slowly discovered what worked –
- The first £100k sale,
- The first £500k sale – so different that it deserves it’s own entry!
- getting to the finals of HSBC Startup Stars,
- getting a term sheet for £300k on a first-pitch,
- scaling 5X in 6 months and growing the team from 10 to 90.
It’s a maelstrom, but when I stepped back and started looking for patterns, I could see them. At University I did a philosophy degree – which for me was all about looking at ideas and seeing how they changed and then changed the world in turn.
A decade as a systems engineer honed my systems and design thinking skills. Then to do something different I did my MBA at Warwick focusing on new venture creation (entrepreneurship) and complex networks.
When Doc Siva introduced me to the business model canvas a decade ago, I was an immediate convert. We worked through 27 iterations as we tried to avoid bankruptcy at one company, before finding the key.
Then for fun and giggles, I started doing the business model canvas for entrepreneurs. Five hundred of these later I realised that I’d gone far beyond what I was seeing in blogs on the net or in articles in the Harvard Business Review. That was the start of this site.
So far so good. I’m a strategist, but strategists aren’t hard to find if you look. Most, strategists however like limits and frameworks.
In my spare time, I head out into the wilderness. Ideally a desert, jungle, or mountain range. I get to the end of the road and ask,
‘Where next?’
I get to the end of the trail and ask,
‘Where next?’
Then I run into the unknown in some of the toughest terrains in the world.
By myself, with no map, no clear goal in mind
Always with wonder. And awe.
Why’s that relevant?
If you want to do something new and the smart guy you are working with has never left the motorway, how good is he going to be with a 4X4 off the edge of the map?
With strategy, I take the same approach. A business model that is identical to your competitors is the kiss of death. To survive and flourish we need to find you something different. We don’t do that if we stay on the highway.
If you are ready for an expedition into the unknown to see what your idea is capable of… let’s have a chat
“When you started on that line of thought, I didn’t know where you were going. Ten minutes later I was sure that we were totally lost. Then, somehow, we were on a hill, on a horizon far beyond where I thought we could reach. Space and time had warped. Wow Denis!”
A quick note on a couple of links. I did history of ideas at undergraduate level at Bristol. The MA Page seemed most relevant, even though it was a different degree. Similarly, I studied for an MSc in Rail Systems Engineering at Sheffield, but the course then moved to Birmingham
Equally with the desert and jungle links – I’ve done both of the races, but those were all organised events rather than what I do which is just head out there, but harder to find a sample webpage.
