Biography
The winners of the past 25 years have been driven by technology and digital. The shift to remote and hybrid working has driven a massive and immediate change in digital adoption, digital ways of working and customer expectations. This presents huge opportunities to organisations that can respond to the change more quickly and an existential threat to those that cannot. But adapting to change is hard.
Dan spent the dot.com crash in Silicon Valley, the financial crisis leading Google UK, and the past six years building some of Europe’s top fintech startups. Drawing on this experience he will talk about the changes that the current crisis is driving, what is likely to stick, and how companies can develop a culture that is more flexible and nimble. More than ever it is the organisations that are the most responsive to change that will survive and thrive.
Pretotyping – a vital toolkit for validating ideas for new products or services quickly, objectively and accurately.
With the seismic shift in consumer attitudes and preferences that will follow the Covid-19 pandemic, we will all have to reassess our offerings. Pretotyping is a smart approach, developed by Google, to evaluating genuine customer responses to a proposition, before investing heavily in developing it. In an interactive workshop (even over video!) Dan will help teams understand the power of this approach and how to adopt it in their every day business. He will leave the teams with a reduced fear of failure and an ability to iterate on ideas more quickly and cheaply.
Dan is an entrepreneur and investor in innovative tech startup businesses, focusing on financial services. He leads the FinTech portfolio for Blenheim Chalcot, a long-established London venture builder. Through this role he has co-founded a number of fast-growth fintech companies including; Salary Finance, Koodoo Mortgages, OpenWrks and ClearScore, and he is on the boards of Liberis, Modulr and Tully. Beyond fintech he is an investor / advisor to a number of companies including Brompton Bicycle, Personal Boardroom, Onfido, Qubit, Fospha and Hive Learning.
Until late 2014, Dan spent over 8 years at Google. For the last three years he was Managing Director, UK & Ireland – the biggest market for Google outside the US and the most advanced major country in terms of e-commerce and online advertising spending. Dan was promoted to the UK MD role after five years in Google marketing, first as Marketing Director, UK, Ireland and Benelux and then as VP Marketing, EMEA.
Previously, Dan was VP of Brand and Marketing for Capital One Europe, Marketing Director for Ask Jeeves, and Marketing Director at Pepsi/Walkers.
Dan is a regular keynote speaker at conferences; speaking on the disruptive power of FinTech, technology, innovation, and Google’s unique approach to business. He was named in the UK Tech Top 100 2019 (number 46) for co-founding Salary Finance and listed in the Sunday Times / Maserati Innovators of the Year 2018 for co-founding ClearScore. He is also an accomplished moderator, interviewer and after-dinner speaker. Dan has shared his thoughts on Physics and Marketing at the TED conference and with over 1.4 million people online. He was named as number 3 in Wired UK top 100 list 2012 and he appeared on BBC’s Tomorrow’s World as a technology commentator and helped Alan Sugar choose his 2014 Apprentice.