Aug 11, 2020
My guest this week is the former MD of Google’s $5Bn UK business. He spent the dot.com crash in Silicon Valley, the financial crisis leading Google UK, and the past 6 years building some of Europe's top fintech start-ups. He has learnt a lot about how to drive success and even more about how to fail.
While he was MD at Google, he came across pretotyping a novel approach to validating ideas for new products or services quickly, objectively and accurately, often by failing efficiently. And now he brings this thinking to all the start-ups he works with. And today he is going to share it with us.
Please give a warm Speaking Business welcome to digital innovator Dan Cobley.
Bio
Dan Cobley 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 Cobley 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 Cobley is a regular keynote speaker at conferences; speaking on the disruptive power of FinTech, technology, innovation, and Google’s unique approach to business. 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 among the Maserati 100 Innovators of the Year in 2018. He appeared on BBC’s Tomorrow’s World as a technology commentator and helped Alan Sugar choose his 2014 Apprentice.
He has a first degree in physics from Oxford and a master’s in management from Cambridge. He is a trustee of the charity Technology Trust.
Recorded on: 27th May 2020
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