The Ascent

Guy talks to Duane Jackson, founder of KashFlow, Supdate and Staffology.

After a turbulent childhood - separated from his mum at the age of 11 and growing up in care - Duane left school with no qualifications. In between IT contracting and looking for some fast cash, he became involved in his friend's drug trafficking business, but in 1999 at Atlanta airport, he was caught with over 6,000 ecstasy tablets and was handed a five-year prison sentence.

On release, he set up as a web developer with support from The Prince’s Trust, but finding that accounting products such as Sage and QuickBooks didn't meet his needs, he developed a web-based application, initially for his own use; that software became Kashflow, and within 10 years, Duane had sold the company for an undisclosed sum, thought to be in the tens of millions of pounds.

Duane’s story is one of adversity, resilience and redemption, with many personal and professional triumphs, including the full-circle achievement of becoming a patron of The Prince’s Trust.

In this episode, Guy is joined by Bobby Healy, Founder and CEO of Dublin-based Manna - a potentially game-changing drone delivery start-up - and a highly-valued member of the Tenzing Entrepreneurs Panel.

Like many of the guests on The Ascent, Bobby discovered a love of coding as a teenager, and before he’d turned 18 he’d landed a dream job writing video games for Nintendo. While passionate about gaming, Bobby found his way to a job in the emerging travel tech sector, at Amadeus, the global distribution system (GDS) - a behemoth technology platform providing travel agents with direct access to the world's airline booking platforms, but inspired to build something better, he struck out on his own and moved to Mexico City to found Eland, a middleware SAAS business that allowed airlines to connect their booking systems into various hosting platforms. Twelve years later, with over 50 staff, Bobby sold the business to trade.

On his return to Dublin, he chanced upon a business with bags of potential, and over the next 15 years, transformed what was then a family-run physical car rental operation into CarTrawler, the world’s biggest B2B travel technology platform. Bobby exited CarTrawler during the pandemic to focus on Manna, which, he says, within three years will either be gigantic or nothing at all.

In this episode, Guy talks to Tom Ilube, serial entrepreneur, Founder and CEO of Crossword Cybersecurity, and a man with such an insanely long list of achievements that it would take pages and pages to list them all. Highlights include: Chair of the Rugby Football Union, CBE for services to technology and philanthropy, non-exec director of WPP, former BBC Board member, founder of the African Science Academy, and 2017 top ranking on the Powerlist, the annual listing of the 100 most influential Black Britons.

Tom describes himself as a “start-up guy” and has founded, and sold, businesses that include Noddle – the pioneering credit rating service – and Garlick, the identity protection company, and he was part of the original team at Egg, the UK’s first internet bank. The son of a British Maths and Science teacher and a Ugandan who arrived in Britain in the 50s to attend army training school, his story is refreshingly different from most in the UK tech sector.

In this episode, Guy talks to Rob Pierre, co-founder and CEO of Jellyfish, a global digital marketing and transformation partner to some of the world’s leading brands, including Google, Samsung, Netflix and Nike.

Jellyfish has had a seriously rocket-boosted few years – French investment giant, Fimalac, bought 50% of the company for just over $700 million in late 2019, which led to a buying spree, and then the pandemic saw revenue grow exponentially, in part because any business that hadn’t already made the migration to digital woke up to the fact that they had to do it, and do it immediately.

Now employing over 2,000 people across 40 offices globally, Jellyfish has featured in The Sunday Times Top Track 250, and Rob has been crowned Media Leader of the Year at the Media Week Awards and featured on the Powerlist 2022, as one of the 100 most influential black Britons. He’s a man brimming with thoughts and ideas and insights, and there’s lots to learn from his determination to do things differently.

In this episode, Guy talks to Sam Smith, Founder and CEO of FinnCap - the largest AIM-listed corporate adviser and broker.

Sam started down a typical path for a Bristol University economics alum - as a KPMG graduate trainee - but felt compelled to quit, the moment she qualified, in pursuit of something riskier: co-creating a new division at private client broker, JM Finn. The gamble paid off, and several years later, she masterminded a partial management buyout of the division, which led to the formation of FinnCap. The rest really is history: Sam became the first female chief executive of a City stockbroking firm.

Among the many fascinating anecdotes and pieces of intel, Sam reveals the moment a mentor nudged her into thinking much bigger about her ambitions for FinnCap. A shift in thinking that everyone could benefit from channelling, and for Sam, the rocket fuel that led to the exponential growth of the business and an acceptance that her insatiable drive is just that - insatiable. Happily, she channels a good deal of that drive into giving others - women and young people from disadvantaged backgrounds - the tools to unlock potential and the skills to succeed in business.

Guy talks to Tenzing Entrepreneurs Panel member, and Aspen Pumps CEO, Adrian Thompson.

Adrian describes his career as a game of two halves: a crazy rollercoaster ride in his twenties, careering up the ladder at a slightly dysfunctional company, where, thanks to youthful fearlessness, he had the opportunity to learn and grow at a furious pace, undeterred by the chaos around him; and life at Aspen Pumps, where, over the last couple of decades, he’s put all that learning into practice, overseeing impressive results and multiple sales to private equity, transforming the company from a north of £10m turnover concern to a thriving £120m business exporting to over 100 countries.

Adrian will be the first to admit that the worlds of toilet pan connectors, roofing felt and air conditioning pumps might not make for - on the surface at least - the sexiest career in the world, but appearances can be deceptive. His years in business have given him a profound understanding of managing teams through turnaround, culture change, rapid growth and beyond.

Kicking off Season Two is Guy’s conversation with super-exiter Stella Donoghue, who, as CEO of Phlexglobal, took the company through three private equity sales in five and a half years, exiting the business herself in 2016.

Stella is one of those leaders who’s lived many different lives in business, starting at age 17 when she won UK Young Entrepreneur of the Year with her own restaurant in Ireland. However, in spite of her success, coming from a prominent family of high-achievers and academics, it wasn’t the route her parents had imagined for her, and marked her out as something of a black sheep, compounded three years later when she sold the restaurant and moved to London to undertake a degree in hotel management and accountancy.

A period at London’s finest hotels culminated in a few high-octane years at Claridge’s, tending to the needs and whims, not just of the super-rich and famous, but potential targets of terrorism, too. However, it was after leaving the heady world of hotels behind to study for an MBA, that Stella found herself – almost by chance, after a random conversation on a treadmill at the gym – landing a role as part-time CFO, and then very quickly full-time CEO, of Phlexglobal. What followed was a period of rapid growth, both at home and internationally, together with big career milestones, giving Stella a deep understanding of private equity, and a raft of invaluable insight and experiences.

Guy has a lively conversation with the ebullient Keith Abel, founder of organic veg box trailblazers Abel and Cole, and, since 2014, Chairman and investor in Freddie's Flowers, a business which enjoyed exponential growth during 2020 and is accelerating plans for major expansion across the globe.

After failing his Bar exams, Keith started selling potatoes door-to-door in south London and grew Abel and Cole into a business worth nearly £40m in 2007. He sold a stake to private equity firm Phoenix that year, but profits plunged and, in 2010, control of the business was passed on in a debt-for-equity swap. He bought back in shortly after and managed to turn the business around again, before going on to lend Abel and Cole alum Freddie Garland £10k to start his eponymous flower box delivery business in 2014.

Keith’s is a rollicking tale of highs and lows, and his conversation with Guy is packed with invaluable learnings, from the value of door-to-door and face-to-face marketing versus digital and social, to exploiting a highly-engaged customer base to raise investment and grow a business, and how to convince someone that they simply have to have a product they never thought they needed.

Guy’s guest, Caroline Plumb, is a serial entrepreneur and CEO who founded rapidly-scaling FinTech business, Fluidly, after experiencing first-hand the pain point of managing cash flow in a growing business. Fluidly was named one of 2018’s ‘Hot 10’ European FinTechs by the FinTech50, and featured in WIRED’s Top 100 Hottest European startups.

Caroline’s first business, Freshminds, came into being just weeks after graduating from Cambridge, and in the intervening twenty years, she has - amongst an embarrassment of achievements - completed a stint as one of the Prime Minister’s Business Ambassadors representing the Professional Services sector, been appointed as a non-executive director to AIM-listed Mercia Technologies and awarded an OBE in the Queen’s 90th Birthday Honours List.

Guy’s interview with Caroline is, as you would expect, full of invaluable advice and learnings, not to mention some quotes to live by - our favourite being “if two people always agree, one of them is unnecessary”, courtesy of William Wrigley (he of the chewing gum fame).

Bill Collis, former CEO and President of visual effects software behemoth Foundry, one-time Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and Tenzing Entrepreneurs Panel member, tells Guy about unwittingly finding himself creating FX for one of the most iconic films of all time… his passion for using maths and algorithms to solve real-world problems… how to take on software pirates and emerge victorious… the value gained from working with multiple private equity backers… and the joys of stepping back from CEO to take up chairperson roles.

Learn about how Tenzing helps companies to grow at: www.tenzing.pe