My name is Huw and I’m a start-up nut.
I’ve got 10 years under my belt scaling tech companies in Europe.
I write about my experiences and learnings taking startup businesses from Series A to exit.
I’m currently available for advising engagements.
Quick Bio:
10 years of experience in a FTSE 10 company ending as the Finance Director of a $5bn turnover division. Slow-moving isn’t my jam, so I had to move to tech.
VP of International Finance and Ops @ Box. My journey included seeing the IPO and scaling international revenue from ~$0 to $100m.
CFO @ Typeform from series A through series B. Lived through 4x revenue growth and international expansion from EU to US. Investors include P9, Index, Connect Ventures, General Atlantic
Currently, COO @ TravelPerk and joined them at ~$1m of revenue. The journey so far has included global hypergrowth, navigating a year of existential crisis during the pandemic, and now into hypergrowth again. Quite the journey! Investors include DST, Kinnevik, Target Global, Spark, Greyhound and others
I stay awake dreaming about:
Scaling companies - velocity, focus, decision making, high performing teams, capital allocation, fundraising and everything in-between
The Future of Work - hybrid, remote, office based and how these and other tools can help people perform at their best whilst living their best life
GOAT - how ubiquitous internet access will change the global talent market by enabling the true GOATs access to the best jobs
“Win and help win”
— Balaji S. Srinivasan
I advise and invest in start ups because I love to see the ecosystem grow and succeed
Being a European based exec for Box, a US HQ’d Enterprise SaaS company, was an experience like no other.
Always out of sight of HQ, things are just harder to get done, but the goals no less lofty.
What a celebration the Box IPO was after a long slog to get it over the line.
Typeform has the most incredible viral adoption so we had a fantastic tailwind for growth. But virality only gets you so far.
With a “prosumer”/SME customer base, managing retention and then finding new go-to-market routes was critical
At Typeform our offsites were a little different ;)
A black swan event like Covid can be pretty life-changing as an exec. Years of work, evaporating overnight.
Leading through a crisis isn’t something I chose, but the amount I learnt in those 18 months was incredible.
Growth isn’t always up and to the right, no matter how great the product market fit