Guest mentors

Gaining Traction as a Startup: Ash’s session is a Q&A designed to share his experiences in setting up, running, and expanding sales teams and creating business growth.

Based on his experience, he believes that the success stories of the future will be the organisations that look beyond shareholder value to deliver against the triple bottom line of People, Planet and Profit. Ashley led the drive for Positive Momentum to become a B Corp, an accreditation that reflects a global culture shift to redefine success in business by balancing purpose and profit.

Ashley is a consultant with Positive Momentum and whilst he has a broad range of clients his sweet spot is businesses with sustainability at their core. He has helped a wide range of clients to achieve stellar success, including Flowgem, a water-saving start-up that grew from zero to a £13 million sale to Centrica in 18 months.

Personifying the Positive Momentum maxim of no-nonsense business expertise, Ashley helps organisations to make the complex simple for employees, customers, and shareholders. He has an awesome network and boundless energy that he will devote to empowering your teams and your business to become everything you hope for.

Addicted to business from an early age, Ashley got his first paper round aged 11 and a second after-school job at 13. At 18 he was doing business with farmers, and by his early twenties was selling mobile phones – when they were £3,000 each! Today he lives in the East of England flatlands with his wife Ros. He loves a sporting challenge and is currently focused on a channel swim in the next couple of years. Ashley’s alter ego is Ordinary Bloke, who blogs about the issues he believes are vital to keeping 7.5 billion people+ alive and well on a healthy planet.

During his almost 37 years at AstraZeneca, Nick has held line management, project management and staff strategy roles within the business. He has worked in multiple countries giving him a rich experience in cross-cultural team building and global working for successful delivery. Most recently he was Executive Director of Transformation within Digital Health R&D. Nick has a strong experience in drug project delivery holding project leadership positions for drug delivery in cardiovascular and Oncology. He has held functional leadership and management roles of teams specialising in project leadership & information management in all therapy areas. He has experience in organisational design and building up teams from scratch to over 120 staff across multiple countries. As head of governance audit for R&D and Global Portfolio Planning & Strategy, Nick gained a sound understanding of the business operations and the balance of business opportunities and associated risks across a significant part of the pharmaceutical development value chain. As chief of staff and Head of Oncology Portfolio & Project Management Nick led the functional build and capability development before taking on his last role leading the Design & Planning team within Digital Health. In this role, Nick developed the vision for how data and analytics could be used to reimagine the traditional study design process, increasing innovation, patient centricity and efficiency and doing this in a way that aligned to the AZ business culture to maximise the success for transformation. Nick secured the business case funding with support from multiple stakeholders and led the building of the team necessary to deliver the product.

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Ann is Head of Practice at the Entrepreneurship Centre working across the Accelerate, Ignite, Venture Creation and Envision programmes. Prior to joining the Centre, she was Enterprise Programme Director at the Scottish Institute for Enterprise, working across all Scottish Universities and Colleges to kickstart and support entrepreneurship and innovation.

Her areas of interest include helping new founders develop a purpose led venture, identifying, and working with company values and prototyping and iterating into your value proposition. She is also a certified Design Futurist and Foresight Practitioner with expertise in helping ventures design and operate resilient, sustainable, and innovative business models.

Andrew has been a visiting mentor for the Accelerate scheme for more than 5 years. Despite his day job as a VP R&D Franchise Head at AstraZeneca, he covers a broad range of business areas and feedback indicates that start-ups particularly value his ability to critique and validate proposed/evolving business models, honing pitch decks and other materials and bringing a fresh perspectives to problem-solving. Prior to joining AZ, Andrew was an Executive Director on the board of start-up company and took a leading role in the development and launch of new service offerings and a brand re-fresh for the company identity. Andrew is advisor to the board for a number of start-ups across a diverse range of businesses and has been invited to join the board of Spliceor Therapeutics a former Accelerate start-up.

Chris is an Investment Manager in the Seed Funds team focusing on spin-out opportunities emerging from the physical sciences.

Chris has spent over 15 years in UK high tech spin-outs and technology transfer. While Head of Engineering at CMR Fuel Cells in Cambridge, Chris led multi-disciplinary teams developing and delivering cleantech products to major multinational partners. He also co-founded Amalyst, a spin-out from University College London where, as Chief Technology Officer, he led its efforts in novel catalyst development for the energy transition. Chris joined UCL Business as a Senior Business Manager in 2016 where he helped commercialise a broad range of technologies from the physical sciences including the successful spin-out Bramble Energy.

Chris studied Chemical Engineering earning his BSc at the University of Tennessee with a magna cum laude distinction and his MSc from the University of South Carolina. He is passionate about the 21st century energy transition especially increasing hydrogen as an energy vector.

Chris joined Cambridge Enterprise in September 2020.

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Anthony (Tony) Harris is an experienced business angel, entrepreneur, technologist, and thirty-year tech-industry veteran. After working in systems software and product management in the USA he co founded Software 2000/Software Imaging UK and the company’s OEM software revolutionised colour desktop inkjet and digital copier printing worldwide.

After exiting in 2007 he completed an MA (Oxon), an MA(Res), and a PhD (Cantab). Tony is a Fellow at Claire Hall, Cambridge and a visiting academic at the Department of Computer Science and Technology (Cambridge).

Tony has an established track-record in technology start-ups, software development, intellectual property, revenue generation, and financial turnarounds. He is a non-executive director of various Cambridge companies, a member of Cambridge Angels, and sits on the board as treasurer.

His areas of expertise include software development, building successful teams, financial turnarounds, corporate finance and taxation, audit oversight, income stream generation, international sales and marketing (OEM and retail), royalty and licensing models, and intellectual property licensing.

Results-driven Senior Advisor with a track record of fostering innovation in healthcare and infrastructure predominantly in the APAC region. Proven expertise in building strategic partnerships, and promoting global innovation through building a diverse network of stakeholders bridging the private and public areas.

Adept at developing market access and commercialisation strategies for diverse organisations with a key focus on market intelligence and alignment. Committed to creating a positive impact on healthcare and the environment and supporting western companies understand and engage with the exciting, diverse and rapidly expanding markets in the Asia Pacific region.

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Term Sheets: Chris will provide an overview of the key elements of a typical fundraising term sheet.

Chris is a partner and head of the emerging companies’ team at Mishcon de Reya. He has over a decade of experience advising early stage and fast growth businesses, particularly in the technology sector.

Chris practices both as a corporate lawyer and commercial and IP specialist and splits his time between offices in the golden triangle of UK innovation; Cambridge (where he lives), London, and Oxford. Mishcon de Reya’s market-leading technology practice advises on over 150 fundraising transactions every year, acting for both growth companies and angel, venture capital and corporate investors.

Sarah Mardle has enjoyed a successful career as a senior leader in healthcare, including executive roles in medical device businesses. Starting as a research scientist in academia, she has significantly grown several startups into sustainable enterprises.

Sarah’s extensive experience spans multinational pharmaceutical companies and product development consultancy firms. With decades of expertise in business operations and compliance, Mardle has introduced numerous in vitro diagnostics and medical devices to markets in the US, EU, and Asia.

Sarah actively contributes to medical standards development, shaping the future of healthcare. A passionate advocate for leadership development, Mardle has coached many to C-suite levels. She shares her expertise through lectures, mentoring programs, and speaking engagements.

Mainda grew up in East Africa before moving to England. She is an International Law and Business graduate with over 15 years of product management and marketing experience in multinational companies and startups covering various industries including publishing and education; professional services, shopping television, retail, travel, and the public sector.

Mainda is passionate about working with entrepreneurs, makers and young people to help build successful ventures. Using her skills and expertise in commercial, technology and intellectual property management, she has been supporting students and entrepreneurs through programmes at Cambridge Judge Business School; the former The Queen’s Young Leaders Programme and other community engagement initiatives covering girls’ education, trade, bio-innovation and food security in Africa.

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Richard is a Cambridge based founding partner in early-stage technology venture capital firm Boundary Capital Partners LLP, making a number of key investments,now including its latest Impact Fund. In addition, he is a guest Professor at Beijing Science and Technology University (no 3 ranked in all of China), Lead Foreign Academician with Hainan University, China, and in 2018 completed nearly four years as a global Dealmaker for the UK Department of International Trade’s Global Entrepreneurship Programme.
He is Deputy Chairman of Image Scan Holdings plc, a Visiting Fellow to the Faculty of Business and Law at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge; an Honorary Entrepreneurship Fellow for Durham University Business School; an external tutor for Warwick University Business School in Entrepreneurship and a mentor for both the Judge Business School in Cambridge and Cranfield Business School. Richard has also been an invited judge for a number of international business competitions and worked extensively throughout Europe, Scandinavia, US. He is particularly active in China and Spanish-speaking countries where he has a degree of language proficiency.
Following a successful 11 year career progression in defence and security with BAE Systems (including development of one of the first UK intelligent telematics vehicles), Richard moved to Cambridge in 1994 to work with the international technology consulting Generics Group (now Sagentia Group). From 2001 with the investment arm of the Group following its successful FTSE flotation, he worked as a fund manager, making investments from a number of funds in diverse areas from nanotechnology to biometrics and vision systems. He then left to set up and lead a new offshore Homeland Security Fund in 2006 and from 2008-2012, was CEO of Blue Star Capital plc, a London based listed company investing in Homeland Security technologies.
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Diana is a data science leader focused on empowering organisations to unlock business impact and value by leveraging data, analytics and models to deliver insights and drive decision-making. Diana is passionate about building teams across data disciplines and skill sets, and believes in investing in teams’ learning and development through coaching and mentoring.

Diana’s experience spans multiple industries, including tech (Deliveroo and Monzo), banking (Goldman Sachs and Barclays) and insurance (AIG and Aviva), multiple geographies (North America, Europe and Latin America) as well as the private sector, public sector (The World Bank), consulting (The Boston Consulting Group) and academia.

Diana holds a Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University and graduated magna cum laude from Yale University with a B.A. in Economics and Mathematics. She has lived in Argentina, the US and the UK and has working experience in the US and the UK.

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David is a Windsor, UK-based Medical Device Entrepreneur with a focus on helping UK companies to launch into the US marketplace which represents 50% of Global Medical Device Sales by value.

Before making a move to startups David was Business Unit Director for Diabetes Medical Devices at Johnson & Johnson UK & Ireland. In the past 10 years he has been CCO at two UK start-ups – Cellnovo and Entia.

Today, he works with multiple startups across both Commercial and R&D addressing key challenges to get products approved, reimbursed and efficiently launched into the market.

David has worked across multiple therapy areas; ECMO, Diabetes, Emergency Medicine, Interventional Radiology, Nephrology, Nutrition, Oncology, Orthopaedics, Pathology, Pulmonology, Sleep Apnea, Vascular, and wound care.

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Building IP Strategies to Secure Investment: Darren’s session will walk you through 7 tops to make your business investible and due diligence ready.

Darren works with both innovative and ambitious technology driven start-ups and the investors who provide the funding they need to progress. His extensive insight into the way both sides work allows Darren to instantly see the situation from his clients’ respective perspectives so that he can provide them with the very best advice.

For start-ups this means building the robust IP strategy that will ensure they secure investment and increase exit valuation. It means ensuring that technology driven businesses looking to attract a buyer or additional investment have an IP portfolio that is “due diligence ready” so sale or investment progresses smoothly.

For investors it means conducting comprehensive IP due diligence that stress-tests the assumptions others have made about valuation and uncovers any associated IP risks in the most pragmatic and cost-effective way.

This avoids investors being asked to pay over-the-odds for their stake or taking on unknown risks and liabilities. It also makes it much easier for them to integrate the target business into their portfolio.

Darren’s decades of experience protecting technological innovations as diverse as explosive detectors, performance apparel, and cardiac ablation devices, means he can quickly build trust and confidence between the parties as he leads them to a deal. He will show that underlying innovations are sound and can be protected, that IP is correctly managed, and that the risks relating to IP have been identified, evaluated and tackled.

Darren also has considerable experience before the UK Intellectual Property Office and overseas Patent Offices, both in relation to patents and designs. As a qualified Patent Attorney Litigator he has also been involved in complex multi-jurisdictional disputes.

Charles Nixon has 40 years experience in marketing and growing companies. He has successfully navigated through 3 major recessions and 2 tech booms. And has worked in textiles; telecommunications; software; data processing; financial services and education, working for Courtaulds, IWS, Accenture , Mercury communications, Extel and Societe General. His specialism is marketing and strategy; encompassing market research ( founding one of the UK’s first computerised marketing intelligence systems), market planning; marcomms; new product launches; branding and strategy.

He co-founded a consultancy and Fintech startup in the 1980s and then founded Cambridge Marketing College in 1991, growing it to a dominant position in its sector before retiring in 2016 to run a publishing venture and establish his foundation.

He is an author of numerous articles and textbooks on marketing. He is a visiting lecturer in marketing and innovation. He is also vice chair of trustees for the Cromwell Museum. Charles has a degree in Modern History and Economics from Manchester University and an MBA from Warwick Business School. He is on the Advisory Panel of Harvard Business Review, a Fellow of the Royal Society of arts, an advisor for Astia and a Chartered marketer. In 2017 he was voted one of the most influential businessmen in Cambridge.

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Simon is a profit and operations improvement specialist/advisor, Founder of Advisory firm Hacks Capital and author of the best-selling book, Negotiation Hacks. He is a Partner at Genpact and a mentor at the Entrepreneurship program at Draper University. Simon is the former COO and CCO of the startup Reef Technology and he has advisory board positions with several startups (inLieu, Lookthrough, OffTheGrid and ProfVal).

Simon received his MBA from the Wharton Business School and his BA in Business and Economics from Nottingham and an MCIPS from the Chartered.

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Rohit Singh is head of Innovation and digital disruption at KPMG’s Advanced Analytics division and brings 20+ years of banking and capital markets experience in data and technology-led innovation. Prior to KPMG, Rohit co-led the banking and capital markets analytics team at Deloitte and has a proven track record of converting new competencies into robust multimillion-dollar businesses. An expert in the field of innovation methods, design thinking and applied intelligence, Rohit specialises in building high-performance digital partnerships and ecosystems. Rohit regularly advises CxO level stakeholders of top financial institutions to leverage new and emerging capabilities in the field of Data Science, Applied AI, regtech and fintech to improve customer experience, reduce cost and increase profitability. Adept at creating a high-performance culture, Rohit is a John C Maxwell certified leadership coach and an experienced Tiny Habits® coach. Tiny Habits is a breakthrough way to form habits, based on 20 years of research in human behaviour by Dr BJ Fogg, Director of Behaviour Design Lab at Stanford University. Combining his leadership methods with principles of behaviour change, Rohit enables his clients to make small changes to have a big impact on their personal and professional life. A strong proponent of developing sustainable competitive advantage through customer empathy, business storytelling and tech-driven innovation, Rohit mentors start-ups and early-stage businesses to launch, scale and grow.

Connect with Rohit if you are looking for guidance on business strategy, customer and market analysis, product/service positioning, design and execution, leadership skills or developing a powerful narrative to raise funds for your business.

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Pav is a highly respected patent attorney with over 25 years’ experience. He is a Partner based in Venner Shipley’s Cambridge office and is the firm’s former Managing Partner.

Pav specialises in high tech fields covering electronics, communications and software including AI and machine learning, and quantum technologies.

He played a central role in Enlarged Board of Appeal (EBA) G1/19 (Pedestrian Simulation) which is the most authoritative case on the patentability of computer-implemented inventions at the EPO, and for which he won the Managing IP award for European Impact Case of the Year in 2022.

Pav advises universities, start-ups and multinational corporations on IP and IP strategy.

He regularly speaks on IP in the UK and around the world and is a contributor to the TenU USIT Guide for Software 2024. He has been recognised as a leading individual by the Legal 500, Managing IP, IAM Patent 1000, IAM Strategy 300, and JUVE UK Patent.

I have over 25 years of experience working in the deeptech industry and academia with high technology companies and in company cluster development. I hold Dr.Sc. in information systems science in computer games development. I started my real entrepreneurial journey setting up a sports software company back in 1999 innovating sports technology with sports industry partners (wearables with e.g. heart rate variability and training effect, wristop GPS for various sports) and smart phone applications which I exited successfully. Since then, I have been part of several startups and now running 3 companies (video games edutech, educational content production, ‘other stuff’). My current big project is running a video games related educational program for people between 18-25 with almost 100.000 participants in over 140 countries. I also maintain a great network of connections and have raised money and evaluated hundreds of SME grant applications for European Commission startup programs, Eureka for instance.

Since graduating in Engineering, Mike has worked in Sales within fast-growing information and services startups for almost 30 years – often competing against much larger incumbents, or operating on the bleeding edge of an entirely new concept. This has required a very dynamic, knowledge-led Sales approach encompassing annual subscription, on-going retainer, and project-by-project revenue models.

Mike has built and led global Sales, Pre-Sales, and Account Management functions for a wide range of companies, ranging from startup to 2,500 people, including reshaping and rapidly improving failing sales teams, and has particular experience working with teams in India and North America.

Mike can help startups understand and prioritise their target markets, build strategies to identify and engage with key people and build revenue, as well as giving advice on commercial team structure, reward and targeting.

He is a partner at salesstrategy.tech, helping a wide range of companies build revenue.

Outside work Mike coaches rowing, most recently helping to get the women of Cambridge University Boat Club ready to race Oxford.

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Chris is an internationally recognised Company Director and Business Coach with a sustained record of achievement in global pharma, biotech, healthcare technology and management consultancy.

He was UK Sales and Marketing Director at AstraZeneca during a 20-year career and from 2002-2018 provided commercialization expertise and management consultancy to global pharma as Company Director at Oxford PharmaGenesis, an internationally renowned consultancy which was recognised by the Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2015 and again in 2019.

Chris has practical hands-on experience in growing and shaping businesses of all sizes and at all stages — new or early ventures, SMEs or Big Pharma — and supporting them in realising commercial opportunities for scalable growth to achieve peak commercial success and maximum shareholder value.

He is currently providing private bespoke management coaching exclusively with CEOs and C-Suite Directors. He is also Mentor and Coach to Life Sciences Ventures at Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge, Imperial College London and The Crick Institute London.

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I’m an exited Founder, Engineer, ex-CTO and CEO. I’ve helped build a technology company from 7 founders to 200 people in 8 years; turned around and sold the business during a pandemic; hired and led Research and Development teams to develop ground-breaking, profitable products – and I’ve got a few patents of my own.

I help entrepreneurs to design a profitable Business Model and compelling Value Proposition, perfect their Pitch Deck to raise Funding, and develop Products which are desirable to customers, feasible to deliver and economically viable.

Miranda helps early-stage biomedical businesses attract investment and develop their business strategy. She founded BioBeat to spur entrepreneurial growth in life sciences and connect entrepreneurs with leaders in the sector.

She has worked with many entrepreneurs on fundraising, business planning and technology transfer. She brings experience as a Technology Transfer Manager at Cambridge Enterprise, University of Cambridge, where she assessed and marketed life science technologies, negotiated licences, and spun-out companies. She was responsible for technology transfer at the University of Cambridge for the Cambridge-MIT Institute. In her five years at the seed capital firm, Cambridge Research and Innovation, she identified and invested in early-stage technologies. Miranda co-founded Cambridge Network with Hermann Hauser.

Miranda studied Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge and has a Diploma from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. She is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and has edited eight science books.

Jon brings an entrepreneurial mindset, the experience of 26 years in tech, 20 years in start-ups, and the founding/co-founding of four companies, combined with coaching, training and mentoring to support leaders to operate with peak performance, peace of mind and sustained fulfilment. He primarily works with leaders and teams in technology companies.

He is passionate about the outdoors, adventure and sustainability, and he brings these into his work.

“Most people tiptoe their way through life, hoping they make it safely to death.” — Earl Nightingale

Jon is here to support those who don’t want to tiptoe through life.

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