Mark Farrer-Brown

I have spent the last 25 years in the start up and scale ecosystem from all angles.

• Founder - I've started up businesses in the UK and India
• Business Angel - I've been investing since 1998, borrowing money to do my first few and then I have been investing my own money since. I've been fortunate to have had two demi-corns with hopefully more to come. I have been a finalist in Exit of The Year at the UK Business Angel Association Awards
• Venture Capitalist and Private Equity Executive - with two others we created top quartile investment returns over a 10 year period
• Coach and Mentor for Founders and Their Teams - most of my time now is spent empowering ambitious founders and their teams to scale up successfully and sustainably

I believe the founder journey is such a hard one that they need all as much of the right help they can get. Compared to the US that help is less available in Europe and is of lower quality. I want to be part of that ecosystem that finds ways to better guide founders through the journey.

My mission is to ignite the spark of one million entrepreneurs who go onto ignite the spark of one hundred million more!

One of my superpowers is my energy for learning which is at least 1-2 hours every day. The learning is not to hoard information but to share it with the founders I work with and beyond.  I learn from books, podcasts, training courses, and talking to others. And I learn the most from the essays I write each month - Mark's Scale Up Essays.

As a coach my favourite part is the one-on-one conversation although I do also coach teams. I love to have conversations with curious and energised people. My coaching may be called founder (or executive) coaching but it is not all about work. You cannot separate the person from the professional and so life coaching also comes into it.

I am happy to talk about tactical topics such as:

• How to become a better decision maker
• How to be a happier, healthier high performer through the recession
• How to create a high performing team
• How to create a winning strategy with 5 key questions

But equally happy to talk about more strategic, deeper topics such as:

• Why is change so hard for us
• The transitions you need to make from start up founder to successful scale up CEO
• Can you predict entrepreneurial success? Yes you can!
• Are founders different to the rest of the working population?
• Why every founder should have a coach. Most do in Silicon Valley, why not in Europe?
• Should VCs be doing more to support their founders in the good times as well as the tough times?

Feedback I have received on previous podcasts includes:

“You were fantastic Mark and definitely spread the inspiration.” 

If you're interested in talking to me please let me know and we'll come up with a topic to talk about.