About Matt
Unconventional, direct, commercial, yet kind.
I'm a keynote speaker, mentor, and business owner who has built and sold my own technology businesses. Stories of rowing the Atlantic Ocean, swimming the English Channel, and growing a business to 42 people bring commercial credibility and unconventional proof to everything I do.
I work with ambitious businesses preparing to exit, scale, or build leadership teams that can run without the founder. My style is direct, commercial, yet kind, proven in real exits, not borrowed from theory. My approach resonates whether I'm working 1:1 with an owner or speaking to 200 business leaders.
My Story
Left home at 16, ran away to sea, worked on a commercial fishing trawler. Someone died on deck. Leadership under pressure from day one.
Commission-only life insurance sales. 200 cold calls a day. Near-total rejection rate. Perform or leave.
Built my own business. Grew to 42 people, £3.8m revenue, sold to a private equity-backed company.
That exit taught me the key lesson: buyers buy leadership teams, not businesses. A business that can't run without the founder is worth significantly less, no matter how good the numbers look.
The Atlantic row and Channel swim weren't hobbies, they were proof of concept. We built the right structures before leaving port.
My own mistakes, the leadership team promoted too early, commercial pressure absorbed instead of distributed, the business nearly lost by being too dependent on myself. Those mistakes became The Uncharted Framework™.
I'm a regular guest on podcasts, radio and have appeared on BBC and ITV.
My Atlantic row raised significant funds for Prostate Cancer UK and Wolo Foundation in memory of my father.
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