Selected Work
Different sectors.
Similar problems.
Building new things.
Making sense of complexity.
Aligning people around ambitious ideas.
Introduction
These are a handful of experiences that have shaped how I think and work today.
I've been fortunate to work across startups, venture studios, family investment groups and ventures and communities that I've helped build from scratch. The settings have been varied, but a few themes recur throughout: building new things, finding clarity and bringing people together around work that matters.
CrowdBnk
Scaling an early crowdfunding platform
I joined CrowdBnk as a co-founder after leaving Barclays, taking a significant step out of a traditional financial services environment and into the emerging fintech and crowdfunding world.
At the time, equity crowdfunding was still finding its feet. Our philosophy was to combine the speed, accessibility and energy of online investing with stronger due diligence than some of the more speculative corners of the market. The aim was not simply to make investing easier, but to make it feel credible, considered and investable.
In practice, I worked deal origination, investor engagement and market-building. I spoke regularly on panels, helped position the business within the London fintech scene and created a breakfast pitching series at the Park Lane Hotel, bringing together founders, angels and investors in a setting that made early-stage investing feel more trusted, aspirational and human.
It reinforced something I've found repeatedly throughout my career: new categories do not grow through technology alone. They need trust, story, relationships and repeated moments of participation that make people feel confident enough to act.
Yellowwoods
Building new growth opportunities across a portfolio
At Yellowwoods, the South African family investment group behind businesses including Nando's, Comparethemarket.com, Hollard and Telesure, I helped establish the group's innovation and corporate venture capital capability, working across ventures, partnerships and strategic initiatives spanning multiple industries and stages of growth.
What made the role particularly interesting was the combination of long-term thinking and practical execution. The work involved helping family principals and leadership teams think about how established businesses respond to change and disruption, introducing new technologies and exploring opportunities beyond the core business.
In practice, that meant supporting investment diligence and pilots, running the Yellowwoods Forum - a quarterly gathering of leaders from across the portfolio - helping founders and leadership teams pressure-test new directions and working with stakeholders whose incentives, perspectives and appetite for change often differed significantly.
It reinforced something I've found repeatedly throughout my career: some of the most interesting opportunities emerge at the intersection of people, possibility and change. Success depends not only on strategy, but on understanding incentives, navigating organisational dynamics and building alignment around something new.
Portfolio T
Building new ventures across healthcare, biotech and AI-powered customer intelligence.
Working across Egypt and Saudi Arabia with scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, designers and operators to take early ideas through validation, proposition development and seed funding opportunities.
Each venture involved bringing together different disciplines and perspectives to explore opportunities at the intersection of technology, science and commercial need. I led multidisciplinary teams through six-month incubation sprints, applying design thinking and lean startup principles to turn ambitious concepts into credible businesses and investment opportunities.
Building participation around a fragmented industry
I started the Sports Business Syndicate (SBS) from a simple observation: the sports industry had no shortage of talented people, events and content, but relatively little infrastructure for trusted relationships and year-round participation.
What began as an experiment grew into a global community spanning more than forty countries and nearly two thousand senior executives, founders, investors and operators from across the sports industry.
The challenge was never attracting attention. It was creating enough trust and value for people to keep coming back, contribute to one another and feel part of something bigger than another networking group.
In practice, that meant designing onboarding journeys, facilitating introductions, convening conversations and events, experimenting with content and formats and creating opportunities for members to help one another. Over time, those interactions led to hires, partnerships, investments, clients and friendships that would never have emerged from one-off transactions alone.
It reinforced something I've found repeatedly throughout my career: people rarely need more access. They need better ways to participate, contribute and build meaningful relationships. When trust compounds, communities create value in ways that are difficult to predict and almost impossible to manufacture artificially.
Reimagining community as part of the business model
Chorus emerged from a question that had been sitting with me for years: why do some organisations create participation, trust and belonging while others simply accumulate audiences?
Part of the answer came from building SBS. I watched relationships compound into introductions, partnerships, hires, investments and friendships. The value wasn't coming from content or transactions alone. It came from creating environments where people could participate meaningfully and contribute to one another.
At the same time, I became increasingly interested in a broader question. As organisations become more dependent on platforms and algorithms they don't control, community increasingly feels like one of the few remaining ways to truly understand, engage and grow an audience on their own terms. Not as a marketing initiative or bolt-on programme, but as connective tissue across customers, content, events, partnerships and loyalty.
I co-founded Chorus to help organisations think differently about participation. We work with businesses across hospitality, fitness, sport, membership and consumer brands, helping them design community-led growth systems through diagnostics, playbooks and pilots that strengthen trust, retention, advocacy and long-term value.
Chorus draws on many of the threads that have run through my work: venture building, behavioural science, communities, relationships and the commercial value of participation. It is one expression of those interests today, rather than the whole story.
It has reinforced something I've found repeatedly throughout my career: organisations rarely have an audience problem. More often, they have a participation problem.