Description

I have spent the last 15 years building and scaling product led technology companies.

I co founded and ran Zzish (Quizalize) for over eight years, growing it into an AI driven learning platform used by 20 million students across 82 countries. During that time we raised more than £6m and worked with schools, publishers and education partners internationally.

Today I work with founders and scaleups on operations, growth and fundraising. Much of my work focuses on helping companies put the right structure in place as they scale. This includes operating cadence, reporting frameworks, team structure and the practical systems that keep teams aligned as the business grows.

Having been a founder operator myself, I tend to stay close to the product and the users. I care about how the business actually works day to day and about building clear operating structures that allow teams to move quickly and make good decisions.

I have raised capital across angel, VC and four oversubscribed equity crowdfunding campaigns and have worked closely with investors, boards and leadership teams during multiple stages of growth. I have also built and managed distributed teams across several countries.

My sector experience is strongest in EdTech, including K-12, higher education, adaptive learning and B2B and B2G sales cycles in education.

Industry field of expertise

Languages

English
Native or bilingual

Workplace preferences

Can work on-site

London (up to 50km)

Zzish
Co-CEO & Co-Founder - Formerly COO
TECH
December 2016 - July 2024 (7 years and 7 months)
London, United Kingdom
AI-driven formative assessment platform (Quizalize)
• • Product and commercial insight: Obsessive about tracking KPIs and user behaviour. Used engagement data, activation patterns and churn signals to shape product and commercial direction week by week. Good at reading what the numbers are actually telling you and moving on it quickly.
• • Product-led growth: Built a B2C freemium engine hitting 850 teacher signups/day. Teacher adoption clustered within schools, generating qualified B2B leads that converted into district and institutional SaaS contracts with LTV/CAC ratios of 14.9x–28.5x.
• • Global scale: Grew platform to 20m students and 1m teachers across 82 countries (50% US, 20% SE Asia, 30% UK/RoW). Scaled team to 30 across London, US and Philippines.
• • Commercial strategy: Dug into Stripe and CRM data to find the high-intent user segments. Drove the pivot from freemium B2C into higher-value B2B and B2G contracts, and opened up new revenue through publisher partnerships and corporate training.
• • Fundraising: Raised £6m+ across angel, VC and four oversubscribed Crowdcube campaigns from investors in 52 countries. At the time, the largest combined edtech crowdfunding raises in European history. Wrote the narrative, built the deck, put together a proprietary automated fundraising process. Ran the diligence and managed investor relations throughout.
• • Operations & finance: De facto CFO: owned P&L, cashflow forecasting and financial planning. Put in the OKRs, reporting rhythms and decision-making structures that held a complex and distributed operation together.
• • Automation & tooling: Implemented operational tooling and worked with our engineers on API integrations to streamline workflows across product, marketing and sales. Always looking for ways to remove friction and make teams more efficient.
Product management Operations AI Automation Partnerships Fundraising
Consultant freelance
Startup Advisor and Mentor
CONSULTING AND AUDITS
January 2019 - Today (7 years and 5 months)
London, United Kingdom
• • Advise founders from pre-seed through to close of round on narrative, metrics and investor positioning.
• • Fundraising strategy, deck development, diligence prep, negotiation and legal documentation. Mentor, judge and speaker across accelerators including Durham Venture School and Supercharger Ventures.
• • Host and panellist at multiple tech and entrepreneurship events. Devised and hosted a sold-out event at the main Google event space for Edtech Week and most recently hosted Dame Alison Rose for a fireside chat on female entrepreneurship.
Commercial strategy Corporate strategy Operational Strategy Fundraising
Crowdfest
Event Director
March 2016 - November 2016 (8 months)
London, United Kingdom
Crowdfest (with UKCFA): UK's largest crowdfunding event
• • Directed inaugural Crowdfest from concept to execution: 82 speakers, 10 workshops, exhibitions and awards over two days. Named a global top-50 crowdfunding influencer within 4 months.