Variety is what attracted me to this role.
In one of my previous jobs, I’d been involved with mid-size software businesses with $200-300 million revenue, requiring heavy transformational work. In another, I worked on smaller, high-growth businesses. While it was exciting to scale them, I missed dealing with the big players. What stood out for me about Advent was the chance to get the best of both worlds. I get to support the management teams in larger tech businesses, as well as helping the smaller ones with a higher growth profile.
Advent’s breadth of knowledge is what differentiates it.
I’d been aware of Advent’s great expertise in the payments sector, but I’d not totally appreciated the depth of experience in so many other areas – such as 20 years or more in healthcare or industrials. When you overlay these verticals on to tech and software, the opportunities are huge.
Entrepreneurship means having a vision.
When I worked for Dell, there was a wall that displayed the timeline of the company – all the way back to the receipt from the first PC that Michael Dell sold when he was running the business from his dorm room. It showed how he was on the front of Forbes magazine just a few years later, and we would still see him around the office, speaking to people. Being able to see how that kind of leadership can turn a tiny start-up into a massive global operation was very inspiring, and I’ve worked with many exceptional founders since. The key to a successful business is having a leader who’s not only on top of the products and operations, but can step back and present a vision.
I was a professional rugby player for a short spell.
When I was younger, I was on the Welsh national rugby squad, and I played the New Zealand All-Blacks in an under-21s game. But my father told me that rugby wasn’t a career, and that I should maintain my focus on getting a degree. I proved him right by rupturing a knee ligament shortly after that. I went to Warwick Business School and then joined Accenture in London.