James Farnfield

Founder

Shake Content

Shake Content is a content agency powering founders to build trust and authority in their space by leading the charge in their marketing efforts for their business. We focus our attention on working with B2B software founders who want to implement founder-led marketing to drive credibility, awareness and generate demand organically and for the long term.

Founder led marketing that makes sales easier. Transform your content strategy with founder content at the forefront of your acquisition channel. Driving authority in your space and long term organic revenue through Shake.

website: shakecontent.com

CEO & Founder

The Everyday Founder

I talk to founders and celebrate their stories that need to be shared. The podcast aims to shine a light on founders that have created awesome businesses that people should know about and potentially don't.

Podcast Host

Hirebyte

Founder & CEO (part of Airbyte)

Airbyte

Exited through dividends in August 2023.

We build amazing digital products at startup prices 🚀

We are a London based digital product studio, providing research, UX design, mobile/web development, and growth marketing.

www.airbyte.uk - james@airbyte.uk

Founder & CEO

Strategic Content Marketing, SEO, and B2B Strategist at Airbyte Digital Product Studio

🚀 Driving Growth Beyond Boundaries | 📈 Amplifying Airbyte's Digital Impact

With a two-year tenure that steered Airbyte Digital Product Studio's online presence, I've led the charge in transforming tech complexity into compelling content, optimizing for search engines, and architecting B2B strategies. This journey not only showcases my ability to captivate tech audiences but also highlights my integral role in propelling Airbyte's business to a seven-figure success.

💡 Tech Brilliance Unleashed: My forte lies in crafting content that captivates, showcasing Airbyte's digital products. Over two years, I consistently delivered innovative content that resonates with our tech-savvy audience.

🔍 SEO Mastery for 7-Figure Impact: Navigating the digital landscape demands a comprehensive understanding of search engine algorithms. My SEO expertise significantly contributed to our seven-figure success.

🤝 B2B Strategy Architect: As the chief architect of Airbyte's B2B strategies, I've excelled in forging meaningful connections within the tech ecosystem, positioning Airbyte as a leader.

📊 Data-Driven Excellence: Leveraging analytics, I've guided Airbyte's marketing efforts, ensuring they evolve for maximum impact on business objectives.

📣 Elevating Digital Presence: Specializing in brand amplification, I've successfully elevated Airbyte's digital presence, establishing us as a powerhouse in the tech industry.

Head of Content and B2B Strategy

taptrip

Taptrip is an award winning end-to-end travel technology solution and is ranked as one of the top 5 most exciting startups in the travel management space. Taptrip is backed by Techstars, Barclays and Easyjet among others and is ready to take on the industry by storm.

Head of Growth

RideTo

RideTo (https://www.rideto.com) was ranked as one of the Top 100 startups in 2018 & 2020 and since 2016 has been bringing innovation to the motorcycle industry, making it safer and easier for more people to experience the freedom of 2 wheels.

I was the Marketing & Growth Lead and I supported the founding team to achieve high growth business targets through full-funnel marketing planning and hands-on marketing channel management. During my time at RideTo I: 

// Increased business growth from 60 to 150 UK training locations resulting in RideTo launching UK wide.
// Grew revenue by 100% in under 18 months with GMV in excess of £1 million.
// Increased market share by 3% resulting in RideTo being the UK’s #1 motorcycle training platform.
// Optimised all paid digital channels decreasing annual spend by 50% and increasing channel growth by 100%.
// Ownership of all customer touchpoint from pre-sale to post-sale up and cross sale leading to RideTo being market leaders in 2019.
// Diversified the marketing acquisition channels from primarily paid channels to a multi-channel model leading to organic acquisitions
being the primary channel for RideTo.
// Set and controlled all company expenditure, forecasts and targets. On target to hit monthly profitability Q2 ’20.
// Developed national partnerships with AutoTrader, Pizza Hut and Deliveroo.

Head of Marketing & Content

During my 12 months as Marketing Manager I delivered a number of high growth targets that included:

// Increased top-line revenue growth by 150% while decreasing the cost per acquisition by 20% in less than 1 year.
// Drove RideTo business growth via full-funnel paid media, including SEM, programmatic display, social, content, and lead gen networks nationally
// Transitioned a few touch-point customer journey to a strategic multi-touch model, continuously optimised that spear-heads up and cross-sell value to RideTo. 
// Go-to-market: Launched RideTo into over 40 cities in the UK, partnering with over 70 sites ensuring that organic and paid channels were initiated on-time and effectively.
// Organic traffic growth: 600%
// Established RideTo into a multi-channel acquisition channel from a omni-channel model, increasing customer orders by 200%

Marketing Content Manager

Travel Blogger Society

In 2017, I founded a blogging platform which later added an accommodation website aimed at travel influencers and travel bloggers to its portfolio. As a part-time hobby TBS has achieved a community reach in excess of 3 million eyeballs across social media. My key achievements/responsibilities are: 

•	Managed a team of 5+ freelance workers that support the brands workload.
•	Created a social media strategy that has increased social media reach by 1000% within first 4 months post-launch.
•	Established relationships with over 200 premium hotel brands and travel influencers to work with the brand.

Onalytica

I joined the sales and marketing team in January 2018 with the aim of growing the sales pipeline and developing the marketing strategy. My key achievements/responsibilities were: 

•	Responsible for new business development for the entire sales team pipeline. Primary point of contact for inbound leads and sales qualification. 
•	From initial contact, developed into the pipeline a number of high revenue prospects such as Waitrose, Air Asia, Eon, Aon and Mitsubishi. 
•	Responsible for a successful marketing event gaining over 50 attendees from high-revenue prospects with 3-week lead-time.
•	Developed the go-to-market strategy for the companies US expansion in summer 2018.

Influencer Marketing Consultant

LinkedIn is not the channel to be sleeping on in 2024 as a 7+ figure B2B CEO. You know it. I know it. 
(but I get it)

I am a multiple time founder and time is precious. 

IS THIS YOU ↓

“I KNOW I need to utilise LinkedIn”

and....

- “I am sitting on lots of underused media”
- “I’ve been sitting on a podcast idea for years”
- “I want to be a thought leader in my space”
- “I want to build brand exposure & inbound leads”

BUT MOST OF ALL ↓

“I do not have the time to post everyday”

So maybe it’s time to Shake it Up.

Building a process and powerful content engine is the answer.

HERE IS HOW SHAKE CAN HELP (you to the 1% of your industry) ↓

1. Craft content pillars, roadmap and LinkedIn strategy
2. Produces podcasts, thought leadership videos and webinar
3. Creates stunning copy posts for you to approve every day

Whilst taking up less than 2 hours of your time each and every month. 

If you are interested in seeing how we can get your started in the next 2 weeks then drop me a message today. 👋🏽

---------------

😆 About Me 😆

I have been on the entrepreneurial journey since I was 16 and have delved into multiple industries from events to web development. I founded Airbyte in 2020, growing the business to 7 figure revenues

Before realising I was sleeping on my LinkedIn. 

The conversations and revenue started flowing.

I knew I had to go back to my marketing routes. 

Shake Content was born in Q4 2023.

https://shakecontent.com/

🎙️ The Everyday Founder  🎙️

1% of professionals are founders, the 0.1% are the stories we glamorise. I talk with the everyday founders on how they are growing their businesses

Alan Furley

ISL Talent

Strong Teams, Built Better. An award-winning talent consultancy. We partner with ambitious startups and scaleups.  

To us, bringing great people and great companies together is personal. We know that the strongest teams are built up from the inside out, starting with first-class people that embody your values and share your vision. So, we apply our passion and personality to go beyond search engines and algorithms.  

We offer a range of plans to meet your talent and recruitment needs. We’ll be your talent partner. We don’t just send CVs, we’ll be embedded as part of your team. 

We practice what we preach. Great people build great businesses. Our people are what make us special. And they're the key to making your team special. 

Want to build great startup teams? Or curious about career opportunities in startups? You’re in the right place – let's talk.

Co-Founder & CEO

MicDrop

Keynotes and workshops on hiring, talent, teams, recruitment.

Keynote and Workshop Speaker

OPUS

Member

VenturePath - The Growth Investment Community

VenturePath is the membership-based community of the UK's most ambitious tech scaleup founders (£1-5m+ revenue). It provides these entrepreneurs with the network, knowledge, peer support and on-demand business growth skills training, plus if required, access to VC funding from a pool of £5bn+ of growth capital.

I support the community as an Expert on hiring and building teams.

Founding Member & Expert

Odin

Odin helps founders, angels and VCs globally to raise and deploy capital in a few clicks.

Founding Member

Tech Talent Charter

I support Tech Talent Charter (TTC) with product development via hackathons, content development for their annual report, and participation in their events.

Our aim is to bring together industries and organisations to drive diversity and address gender imbalance in technology roles.

The TTC is a commitment by organisations to a set of undertakings that aim to deliver greater diversity in the tech workforce of the UK, one that better reflects the make-up of the population.

Signatories of the charter make a number of pledges in relation to their approach to recruitment and retention. Although it is very much an employer-led initiative, in March 2017 the TTC was supported in the government’s policy paper on the UK Digital Strategy.

If you are interested in helping to drive greater diversity & inclusion in tech, sign up at https://www.techtalentcharter.co.uk/sign-up

Ambassador

FemTech Lab

Supporting on hiring, growing teams and building culture to Europe’s first FemTech-focused accelerator that helps rising stars in the space take their products to market and raise capital, unlocking the blue ocean of female health & wellness for a fairer, better world.

Advisor

StudentCrowd

Introduced by Mercia to support the founders and leadership, helping them scale their team around a £2.5m seed funding round.

Talent Advisor

Landscape

Helping founders access top tier VCs, angels and family offices.

Venture Scout

The Accelerator Network Ltd

Supporting companies raising seed and Series A funding through The ScaleUp Accelerator & Accelerator Academy programmes.

My role is guiding the startups and scaleups on their people and organisational strategy, helping them attract and retain great talent as they receive investment to grow.

Mentor / Advisor

Co-founder & CEO | Strong teams, built better | Strategic talent planning | Venture Scout | Talent advisor | Mentor | Public speaker | 10ksb alumni

Every great startup is built by great people. But hiring them? That’s where most founders struggle.

I help VC-backed founders hire with confidence, building teams that scale, thrive, and stick around. 

Too many founders rush into hiring without a clear plan, ending up with the wrong people in the wrong roles.

I work with brilliant founders to define what success looks like, align hiring with their mission and values, and navigate the talent market strategically.

I also partner with VCs who know their portfolio companies need the right teams to succeed.

As a founder myself, I know hiring isn’t easy. I’ve built and led teams, made mistakes, and learned what works through experience - not just theory.

With 20+ years in recruitment and having partnered with with 100+ startups, I bring a rare mix of founder insight and deep hiring expertise.

Recruitment is full of short-term thinking and transactional players. I take a different approach - building long-term partnerships that help startups hire for impact, not just headcount. 

I build relationships more Tiffany & Co 💍 than Tinder 👈

If you’re a founder or investor serious about hiring well, let’s talk. Follow me for insights or send me a message - I’d love to help.

100+ people. Two formats.

One goal: unlocking the power of wearables in the NHS.

We’ve hosted 25+ events this year – but this one was a first.

We brought together founders, funders, and policymakers – the three forces that must align if we want to see tech drive real change in healthcare.

It started with a closed-door roundtable – founders, investors and policy leaders in one room, digging into what’s needed to create real momentum.

Then we opened it up to a wider audience. 80+ people joined a panel discussion on wearables, and AI – exploring two of the government’s five big bets in the NHS 10-year plan.

I even had the chance to moderate the panel on wearables – a little out of my comfort zone!

I love the tech I see in wearables but as ever it's not just a tech thing that will help transform the NHS.

Founders innovating in this space will make impact though the right partnerships, the right pathways, and the right people.

At ISL Talent, we recruit for some brilliant healthtech clients – but we host events like this because we also see our value in convening the key players who can actually move the ecosystem forward.

Massive thanks to:
– Emily (DHSC), Tharni (NICE), and Vinous (Startup Coalition) for sharing their insights
– Rupert and the London AI Hub for hosting us so well
– Fizel and Louise at Performr.ai – brilliant partners from start to finish

We’d love to do more events like this – especially where innovation meets policy.

If you’re working in this space too and want to partner then please let me know!

Hiring & Talent Expert for Startups 🚀 | Helped 100+ VC-Backed Founders Build & Retain A+ Teams for Scale | Speaker, Advisor, Workshop Leader

For all the talk about UK innovation, it only matters when brilliant ideas actually make it out of universities and into the wild.

That’s what yesterday’s SETsquared Partnership Investment Futures 2025 event was all about - bridging the gap between research, funding, and real-world impact.

From biofuels to quantum security, AI-driven health tech to sustainable energy, the range of spinouts pitching was seriously impressive.

Many have emerged from SETsquared universities - proof that the South West’s innovation ecosystem has plenty to shout about.

I was invited to contribute to a roundtable on “Securing and incentivising the best talent”, exploring how spinouts can attract and retain the people who’ll turn world-class research into scalable businesses.

We talked about the importance of understanding the market for talent - not hiring blind, but knowing who’s out there, what motivates them to join at early-stage, and how to compete for their skills.

Because the most advanced tech in the world still relies on people to make it succeed.

Massive credit to Marty Reid and all the SETsquared team for another high-energy, high-impact event - connecting founders, investors, and innovators who are quietly shaping the future of UK science and tech.

Here are 17 UK startups using AI to change how we live, work and create.

They’ve all raised £1m–£10m in 2025. And are hiring.

From healthcare and agriculture to film, gaming and manufacturing – these companies show just how much promise AI innovation in the UK has.

They all sit in that sub-100 employee stage where growth feels electric.

Here’s the list 👇

Arondite
AI software powering secure, autonomous systems for defence and humanitarian use.

AudioStack
AI platform creating studio-quality voice and audio content in seconds.

BigSis (Insect control)
Combines AI, robotics and biology to deliver chemical-free insect control for agriculture.

Biographica
Uses AI to identify the genes that can transform global crop yields.

Electric Twin
Models realistic synthetic populations with AI to help governments and companies make better decisions.

Fern Labs
Builds agentic AI that can autonomously write code and create applications.

LabGenius Therapeutics
Develops new antibody drugs using a machine-learning-driven protein engineering platform.

Latent Technology
Uses AI to bring lifelike physics-based animation to games and virtual worlds.

Magentic
AI agents that uncover savings and efficiencies across global supply chains.

Matta
Creates AI copilots that automate advanced manufacturing and improve quality on the factory floor.

Optellum
AI platform helping clinicians diagnose and treat lung disease earlier and more accurately.

Pangaea Data
Applies AI to healthcare data to find patients faster and improve clinical outcomes.

Plumerai
Makes deep learning ultra-efficient for small devices – powering smart cameras and sensors everywhere.

sees.ai
Develops AI flight control systems enabling safe, autonomous drone inspections.

Solve Intelligence
AI tool that helps IP attorneys draft and manage patents faster and with greater accuracy.

The Data City
Uses AI to map emerging sectors of the UK economy in real time.

Wonder Studios
Creates AI-native films and content with a new generation of digital storytellers.

==

To be clear - I’m not hiring for these companies.

I’m sharing them to spotlight the innovation happening across the UK, and to help job seekers find the firms building the future with AI.

Increasingly, I’m working with AI and deep tech companies - and it’s incredible to see the scale of ambition, diversity and creativity across the sector.

So if you’re job hunting:
🔍 Research the companies on this list
💡 Find the ones that excite you
📩 And reach out to them directly

And if you’re building in AI and want to get your roles seen by more people - feel free to add your company in the comments 👇

AI interview cheating is getting out of hand – and it’s raising a bigger question: what can we actually trust anymore?

We’ve already got candidates

- reading AI-generated scripts off a second screen
- using tools that whisper answers in real time
- deepfake filters that fake perfect eye contact

Now interviewers are asking people to close their eyes just to check if they’re actually thinking for themselves.

It sounds ridiculous.

But this is where we are.

And if this is what’s happening with basic, consumer AI tools… what does 2026 look like?

Do founders end up dragging interviews back in person just to feel they’re speaking to the real human?
(At least until AR glasses and earpiece coaching catch up too 😰)

Makes me wonder if hiring becomes less about skills and more about trust.

Thanks to Hung Lee for sharing this with me.

But where do we think this AI cheating ends?

Deep tech incubators, robotics labs, and 20+ investors – this is the South West like you might not know.

I’ve spent the past few months working closely with deep tech founders across the region – and seen just how much value is being created.

So it was great to see VCs from outside the South West experience that first-hand at last week’s Deep Tech Investor Showcase in Bristol.

- Pitches with purpose.
- Deep tech innovators that are scaling.
- And conversations that felt like the start of something real.

Huge credit to Edward Tellwright and the British Business Bank for bringing together such a strong group of founders, funders and ecosystem builders.

And to Science Creates – who we’re proud to be a recruitment partner to – for hosting much of the day that showed what makes this ecosystem so powerful:

→ Deep collaboration across universities, workspaces and people
→ Spaces where scientists can move fast – and actually build
→ A culture of innovation that’s proudly local, but globally ambitious

There's plenty emerging here on deep tech - if you’re curious about what’s happening in the South West I’d love to chat!

Wearables are now part of the NHS 10-Year Plan – but most of the UK still isn’t using them.

Why?

Because building the tech is only half the challenge.

Getting it adopted is the other half – and that’s where things stall.

That’s why I’m genuinely excited to be co-hosting my first event on this topic:

Wearables, AI & the 10-Year Plan

 🗓 Thursday 13 Nov, 10:30–12:00
 📍 London AI Hub
 🔗 luma.com/wkntkyi5

It all started with a Whoop band. I’ve become a bit obsessed – sleep, recovery, strain – and it’s changed how I think about my health.

That wearable also led me to Fizel at Performr.ai – equally passionate, and a huge help in bringing this event together.

Here’s what we’re unpacking:
 🔹 What does credible adoption actually look like?
 🔹 What do NHS decision-makers really need to see?
 🔹 How can innovation, investment, and policy finally align?

You’ll hear from:
 ✔️ Policy leads from DHSC and NICE
 ✔️ Founders building in the space
 ✔️ Investors backing the future of health

Also grateful for the support of Startup Coalition, and excited to be back at London AI Hub for our second event this month.

If you’re building, investing, or just curious about the future of wearables in UK health – come and join us - register here https://luma.com/wkntkyi5

And feel free to tag someone below who should be in the room 🙏

Rachel Reeves’ first budget is looming... and it’s going to cost us all.

More tax. More admin.

Less room to manoeuvre - whether you're scaling a startup or just trying to make payroll.

I’m seeing fewer UK founders hiring here.

The instinct is to look abroad.

“Talent's cheaper in Europe,” they say.

But is it really?

Here’s what it actually costs to employ someone on a €60,000 salary:

🇪🇸 Spain – €79,637
🇩🇪 Germany – €74,824
🇫🇷 France – €95,303
🇬🇧 UK – €66,643

Turns out, the UK is still one of the most affordable places in Europe to hire.

So yes, the budget might make things harder.

But before you pull the plug on hiring in the UK - take a second look at the full picture.

And genuinely… why would anyone hire in France?

taplio

The Battle

James Farnfield

Alan Furley

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The Battle

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Alan Furley

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Alan Furley's LinkedIn Performance

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