Cardinal Newman

University of South Wales

Strategic Head of Growth

Norwich, England, United Kingdom

Startup mentor, advisor, CRO, growth hacker...someone in a hurry helping people in a hurry.

Helping the excellent Raise Ventures accelerator programmes reach broader audiences & helping portfolio and new startups with their growth curves.

Talk to me if you're a tech company with a proof of concept and want to take part in an innovative and successful accelerator programme (for equity).

RAISE Ventures

Startup Mentor

Building NeoITO partnerships in the UK, helping startups build from the ground up with a venture studio that can help them build their MVP and beyond.  Looking to add to and accelerate NeoITO's portfolio of tech startups (so get in touch if you're looking for a development partner that will scale with you and be your CTO).

NeoITO

Chief Growth Hacker

Magic Sauce has a vision of becoming the central hub for startups and investors globally.

We recognised a lack of diversity and trust in the startup process between investors and founders and we're seeking to redress it by educating both on what can help them build better strategies.

We aim to bring them together along with the companies that support the tech ecosystem to provide a community that will allow the free exchange of ideas and information to improve the quality of startups and deal flow at both ends.

We'll also be helping startups at the ideation stage of their journey by providing them with tried, trusted (and most importantly) FREE templates and guidance to help them get test their assumptions and get an all important proof of concept.

Magic Sauce Online

Co-Founder

The first digital accelerator in the East of England is flying!

I'm looking to talk to all potential investors, sponsors and entrepreneurs looking to get involved.  It's a chance to imprint on something new and bring to bear your knowledge and experience to create awesome.

We've built this thing from the ground up, bootstrapping it as any startup would.

We have excellent support from partners, donors and an eco-system to really drive the next Unicorn forward.  With headline support and sponsorship from the likes of Barclays, Hubspot, Google Cloud and more, we plan to identify and rapidly scale digital businesses in the East of England, as well as the broader UK via our virtual acceleration model.

We've now helped 10 companies collectively raise £4.2m across Insurtech, Agritech, Insurance and more.

TechVelocity Norwich

CEO/Founder

Commercial advisor to Prosper BI of the Senlab Group

The SenLab Group

Advisor

Developing Experts Ltd.

Working with the Creative Armoury to bring all of their London Agency experience to bear in East Anglia.

These guys have worked on branding campaigns for the likes of Mars, Diageo and Cisco (among others) in the past, and are working on some exciting stuff for known brands right now.

Nobody thinks about their brand as the first port of call before they build their site, marketing collateral and internal/external communication tone.....but they should.

I've seen first hand how a full branding exercise can mean that your user experience, look and feel of your site and much more can put you beyond Minimum Viable Product stage from the get-go.  You end up saving money on your site and making money for your business by spending your money wisely at the outset.

The Creative Armoury

IT support made simple.

Woop are looking to cut down on your IT callout charges by offering a full support service that prevents your problems before you even know about them on your hardware, your network and your devices.

It deploys agents that monitor your devices for threats, prevents them using best in class antivirus, and provides unlimited chat and telephone support for under £20/month per device.

Go to Woop.Rocks to find out more!

Woop IT

SELECT  CONNECT  PROTECT
The all in one shop for temporary flooring solutions.

I'm charged with overseeing the routes to market for this exciting new proposition.

It means that you don't have to hire temporary flooring to protect your event space any longer, you can buy it!

It also means that for home users this specialist flooring is now within reach to protect your garage floor, your garden, or driveway because this easy to use flooring can be sold in the amounts you need.

Floorbox Limited

A revolutionary product that cuts out the need for onerous manual input of any kind of document.

Core engine is built with board level approval from two global companies.

Looking for seed stage investment for two further mass market products that means that "making tax digital" will be a doddle.

Inbox Integration

Working as a consultant head of sales and marketing at Innovify, connecting start ups and established companies with innovation and Agile product development.

Specialising in web development, apps and data products to help companies get their digital products off the ground, I proactively marketed the company through traditional methods, mainly focusing on heads of department for businesses from micro-enterprise level.

Innovify

Consultant Head of Sales

Leveraging 20+ years across senior roles in marketing, sales and banking, I've been bringing my experience to bear helping other companies strategise routes to market, accelerating growth, helping them raise investment and bring ideas to life.

Currently working with Ubisend, The Creative Armoury, Woop and TheFloorbox, as well as acting as a venture expert with Bite the Cherry venture coaching team. I recently spent 9 months as a consultant Head of Sales for Innovify.

Kinnovate Ltd

Business Consultant

I headed up a team of client consultants and affiliate consultants, providing a multi-channel, customer-centric approach to clients marketing requirements.

I led a change to our tracking platforms, and was a catalyst in changing the business model for Conectia to reflect our rebrand.

I led the way in bringing Conectia closer to large networks and direct clients, looking to fill the gaps in the marketing plans of national and international companies to gain them revenue, exposure and access to new markets.

I was part of the push towards Conectia 's aim of building content-led sites (writing a fair chunk of content myself!), and championing new products such as TravelTu  and lead generation via heavy traffic sites.

Client and Publisher relationships were foremost and I trained the staff to aim towards building compelling propositions to do business with Conectia, aiming to profile publishers to maximise their effectiveness.

I always looked to reach a scenario whereby the best insights were gained from clients and publishers alike to ensure the campaigns that best suited the publishers were being sought, providing them with the insights needed to succeed.

Conectia

Head of Client Services

Team Manager at Team America, bringing fantastic wines from independent winemakers within everybody's reach in the US. Our Angels help bring these artisan winemakers to get a global audience for their fantastic wines. It was my teams jobs to give Angels their wings and to keep our Angels happy with sound wine advice and fantastic service. It's my job to make sure the team don't let their halo's slip.

The lifetime value of our customers doubled within six months and has allowed me to double the size of the team that existed in July of last year. They even deliver 90%+ customer satisfaction into the bargain.

I've also run a number of attrition based projects in the last year to help the US side of the business double the number of Angel customers (through a combination of better retention and acquisition). We grew the subscriber base from 30k static to 130k in just over a year.

Working in tandem with my colleague in the states we continually strove to bring the best out of our teams, reporting directly to the US board.  We examined our methods, reporting, EBITDA and forecasts to look for ways to continually improve the customer journey.

Naked Wines

Team Manager/Joint Chief of Sales

Prime functions are to provide the full compliment of IT solutions to customers across a range of verticals.  Customers include the likes of the UNAIDS/WHO, through FE colleges, charities, housing associations and sporting bodies, to name a few. My personal specialties are security, networking, storage and cloud solutions.  I see my remit as providing the best fit solutions at best ROI.  I also liaise with vendors and distributors regularly to set up & manage relationships for security products marketed by CCS Media.

Won a tender to supply all Welsh colleges with consumables in 2014, and a number of other tenders for networking, security and servers to individual colleges.

CCS Media Limited

Providing hardware and software solutions to corporate, not-for-profit, health, educational, NGO and governmental organisations.  It's also within my remit to manage vendor relationships and obtain lowest possible pricing for the organisation on a range of products.  I also introduce new products/solutions and provide marketing input. I've recently relocated to open the Cardiff office of DST to further enhance the client portfolio in the south. I have experience of selling security, hardware, storage, networking and general software as well as print consolidation...bit of a specialist all rounder! Experience of selling the likes of Cisco, HP, Fujitsu. I also have a number of sales accreditations from the likes of Symantec, McAfee, Fujitsu, Sophos, etc. I've managed the relationship with many of these vendors too.

DST Business Systems

Business Development Manager/Presales - IT reseller sales

Responsible for arranging and driving online sales of acquisition/obsolete stock to increase warehouse space and profit margins.  Utilising online marketing techniques, presenting and writing of copy for the products undertaken.

Scotts of Stow

Online Marketing and Trading Manager

Starting as a mortgage adviser and becoming top mortgage seller for the branch network inside my first 18 months, I firstly became deputy manager of that branch and was subsequently promoted to branch manager for Swindon.  Took that branch from 72nd in terms of profitability to 14th in my first year.  Provided local management for external/field/specialist advisers.

Northern Rock

Branch Manager & Qualified Mortgage/Lifetime Adviser

Sold the full range of Woolwich/Barclays Open Plan products, mainly mortgages, insurance, assurance, personal loans and current accounts. A regular high achiever, I rose to the position of deputy team leader and was eventually head hunted by Northern Rock.

Barclays Bank

Deputy team leader/Customer sales adviser

Started on the sales team in the lost sales department. This consisted of receiving details of a potential customer to contact after someone else had failed to sell them a mobile phone.  Held the record across departments for highest number of sales in a shift and week. Mentored and trained up to 24 staff on a team as well as ensuring they hit their kpi's.

1st Line Mobile

Team Leader

Started as a Telesales exec tasked with cleaning the database. Took on responsibility for IT purchasing after one month, had my own set of IT only accounts in what was primarily a digital print company. Helped land a 200 office account through the provision of a complete package for a chain of estate agencies.  Trained field sales staff in IT products and accompanied them on meetings to provide technical know how where lacking. Reduced IT purchasing costs by 30% as an average within a month. I also managed the department that built computers to order to ensure all builds were to timescale and standard.  I also managed Telesales staff charged with cleaning the database and providing leads to the sales team, co-ordinating their activities into the bargain. I also trained and mentored the Telesales team. Responsible for recruiting Telesales staff.

Kris Jones (He/Him)

Kris Jones (He/Him)