CEO at SAS | Creating Moonshots

I help founders and organisations navigate moonshot-scale ambitions using a methodology derived from NASA mission design.Most strategies fail because they confuse ambition with readiness. 

Leaders commit time, money, and reputation before they have learned what actually needs to be true. I help them work out what must be learned, so they don't spend years executing the wrong thing.

I spent 25 years building and scaling businesses, mentoring 100+ university spinouts (pre-spinout and many post-spinout) across Oxford, England, and Scotland, and working as commercial lead inside the complexity of deep-tech ventures. I am not just an advisor who parachutes in. I am an entrepreneur who's built the thing.

I am currently leading the Oxford Moonshot Programme, which launched in January 2026 with 18 deep-tech founders. I am also writing a book on how big ideas become reality, using case studies from Deeptech, the Eden Project to SpaceX.

When I work with schools or boardrooms, I bring authentic Apollo mission artifacts, including a lunar module contact light and an SCE to AUX switch, as proof that this methodology is not borrowed. It is rebuilt from the best framework humanity has for achieving the impossible under extreme uncertainty.

This is for Deep-tech founders, academic leaders, CEOs, and institutions with serious capability but foggy direction.

This is not for early-stage founders looking for tips, people shopping for "support," or those wanting validation rather than challenge. If you want navigation clarity, let’s talk.

Mark Zwinderman

Scotland does not lack talent.
It lacks tolerance for uncertainty.

I just spent a few days in Scotland meeting some great people, attending the Venture Café Edinburgh. It was good to see some familiar faces and hear about the many good things happening.

There is also, in these conversations, a recognition of the uncertainty issue. Scotland tries hard to regulate innovation. There are some brilliant support schemes and organisations. Scottish Enterprise has the High Growth Spinout Programme, which remains one of the best there is.  

Yet, much of the support available needs to follow the premise that failure can’t happen. If it does, the support wasn’t right. 

The latest Hunter foundation manifesto largely makes the same mistake. It includes an elite group for AI, a passport to be part of the scale up club, ROI and KPI for success. It’s missing the point.

Innovation policy should be judged not by how many winners it backs, but by how many serious attempts it enables.

Not by success rates. Not by strategic fit. Not by elite credentials.

But by raw number of serious experiments made possible.

We cannot predict which will matter.
We must create the conditions for these experiments to happen. Trust the founders. Support and learn.

Scotland is awesome. Really is. If the ecosystem became comfortable with uncertainty , it would change the prospects of the country. That’s how high the stakes are.

I architect Moonshot programmes for leaders, enterprises, and regions

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The Venture cafe in Edinburgh was a good place to finally meet these folks in real life. 

The next step will be a Bruce Springsteen based accelerator for founders able to recite the lyrics of Wild Billy’s Circus Story for the judging panel.

Seriously. Two excellent men, Springsteen fans, and a pleasure to meet Stephen Gibbens and Dave Hughes.

Great to see Claudia Cavalluzzo doing her thing. Bringing people together to find solutions. 

And finally, an opportunity to say thank you to Ruairidh Henderson from the Higgs Centre for Innovation. Not only a constant support for the founders there, he gave the Moonshot Factory a shot. And together we did some great work at Higgs.

Equity As Fuel.
 
When a university spins out a company, equity is the fuel that determines whether the 7-10 year journey is completed, or gets stuck halfway to the destination (in orbit, rather than the Moon).
 
There is often talk about using equity for growth. The why (Simon Sinek would approve) is usually not discussed and understood very well.
 
Equity is regularly seen as the value. The Gold. However, how equity is seen and managed is the difference between loading up your Moon rocket with a heavy cargo, or with fuel to reach the Moon.
 
Why?
 
The experienced CXO you need is calculating "Is the potential (1% probability or so) upside worth 7 years of my life?" They see 50% equity allocated before the real work begins. They do the math on dilution, early stage salaries, and exit scenarios, and combine this with the low % likelihood of a major exit.
 
Then they take the role elsewhere with a proper cap table, or they keep/take the well paying role in a larger and established business. The spinout has to settle for less experienced management. You're already behind.
 
Investors don’t fund IP. They like IP, but they're funding the team that turns IP into revenue. Insufficient equity room for that team? They either pass, or offer terms adjusted to reflect the risks of future cap table fixing.
 
It makes fund raising harder. It reduces the pool of interested VC and Angel investors ("Spinout? No, we don't deal with those"). It also reduces valuation.
 
All of this makes it harder to attract the best people early on, or at scale up stage. Because the best people assess funding needs, and the cap table when they decide to dedicate the next 5-7 years to the business. They wonder... Can this business raise the money it needs, and keep the people it will need along the way?
 
Somewhere between years 2-4, things get really hard. Product & regulatory delays. Customer pilots that ghost you. Competitors launching great products. It is inevitable.

Your stressed CTO is getting approached weekly with £200K salaries, clean cap tables, meaningful equity, or a role in an established competitor. Less stress, more cash. Without sufficient upside, they leave exactly when you need them most.
 
Good people have ten brilliant ideas. Every day. You can only develop and bring to market one, maybe two. They're bored, frustrated.

Your CEO took you from zero to £5M. Now facing the grind to £50M while getting offers for other early-stage opportunities with better equity, or larger competitors offering good salaries and benefits.
Competition tries to poach your best people. Without equity making them (potentially) wealthy, they're available to offers.

Equity as gold weighs down the rocket and leaves you stuck in orbit. Equity as fuel, that gets you to the Moon.

#Spinout #Moonshot #DeepTech

I'm starting 2026 optimistic about UK innovation.
 
We have 4 of the world's top 10 universities. Our scientists and researchers are solving problems that matter. These cover rapid disease detection, clean energy breakthroughs, AI to transform healthcare & other industries, materials that may decarbonise industry.
 
The innovation coming from UK universities is world-class. Always has been. I have done business globally, and the UK has a strong innovation brand.
 
Our spinouts are tackling food security, pandemic preparedness, climate change. The potential is sitting in labs right now, ready to become products, to develop into companies that create jobs, export technology, and solve global challenges.
 
Cambridge and Oxford's deep tech ecosystems are thriving. Imperial, UCL, Edinburgh, Strathclyde, Manchester; these are innovation powerhouses. Britain has always punched above its weight in technology. From Turing to Tim Berners-Lee to DeepMind.
 
We do this.
 
Yes, we have some structural barriers. Cap table issues. Protracted negotiations. Incentive misalignments.
 
But I'm seeing and hearing that people WANT to fix them. University leaders who know the current system wastes potential of their science and spinouts. People working at funding bodies who are willing to measure outcomes (jobs!), not just outputs (spinouts).
 
Investors are ready to back British deep tech if the foundations are right. Founders with technologies that could change the world.
 
The UK Innovation Architecture has cracks, or in some cases is lacking the right structure. But this can be fixed.
 
2026 is the year we do it. Not through more talk. Through systematic reform that builds on past efforts. These are the five structural changes that will enable the creation of scaling innovative companies.
 
1. Funding bodies & Universities measuring real impact

2. Policies from Universities that enable faster spinout setup with clarity for all

3. Post-docs empowered to commercialise

4. Integrated pathways from research to scale

5. Improved ability for academic founders to move between Academia and spinouts, and return to Academia
 
The innovation is here. The talent is here. The ambition is here. It is time to architect the right infrastructure. If we create the right environment, the scientists, innovators and entrepreneurs will take their opportunities. 

Britain should not aim to become Silicon Valley. We need to become the best version of ourselves. Turning world-class research into world-changing companies.
 
Happy New Year.
 
#Innovation #UKTech #DeepTech #NewYear #Scotland #Oxford #UK #Spinouts

The B4 - Moonshot Factory partnership

Moonshot CEO Breakfasts at Rhodes House - What's your Moonshot?

Space for 6-8 CEOs. Six breakfasts over 2026. 

Led by myself with 25 years building and scaling SAS Environmental Services, and working with deep tech founders across Europe, Scotland and Oxford to think bigger.

The format: Two hours. Rhodes House. Breakfast & Coffee, and straight talk about the gap between where your business is and where it could be in 5 - 10 years.  

No presentations. No theory. Just frameworks based on the Moonshot methodology that got Americans to the Moon, Teslas on the road, and that work. All with peers who get it.

What you will leave with: Your moonshot goal defined. The 3-5 moves that matter. Peer accountability to actually do them across 2026.

Limited to max of 8 Oxfordshire CEOs their businesses.

First breakfast: 26 February 2026, Rhodes House, 8:00am - 10:30.

Contact me to see if this is a good fit for you.

#Oxford #B4 Richard Rosser Tina Rosser #Oxfordshire #Business

The next decade will test every assumption your business was built on.

Most Oxfordshire CEOs & Leaders know this. Few have the space to think rigorously about what it means for their specific business.

The Moonshot Factory creates that space.

Six breakfast sessions over 2026 at Oxford's historical Rhodes House. Eight senior leaders. Deep strategic exploration of cybersecurity, AI, workforce transformation, climate risk, geopolitics, and market evolution. Not as abstract trends, but as forces reshaping your business.

Two places remain in Cohort 1.

Ready to think strategically about 2030 instead of reactively about Q1?
DM me.

B4 Richard Rosser #Oxford #Oxfordshire #Business #Strategy #Moonshot

"Being a physicist is hard, but it's better than having to work for a living" - Aurelio Grillo.

I just finished In a Flight of Starlings by Italian Nobel Laureate Giorgio Parisi. A beautiful book/essay on complex systems, the nature of ideas, and doing things because they enrich our world.

At the Oxford Moonshot launch this past week we played a simple game. How much money would you accept to sell your business for? The conditions keep changing, the timing keeps changing, etc. 

One comment from a founder 'Yeah, but you can't do this for the money'.

True words indeed. Being an entrepreneur is hard, but it's better than having to work for a living. You have to love the puzzle.

Have a good weekend. Go read In a Flight of Starlings. Gorgeous book.

#Beauty #Starlings #Science #Entrepreneurship #Physics #Oxford #Moonshot

Once upon a time the UK had great universities but almost no spinouts.

Now we have great universities and many spinouts. Some of these spinouts become great companies. Some of them don’t. 

A lot of hard work has improved things. Now we need to evolve the system and address the issue of volume over quality.

We need better spinouts because innovation is key to growth and a prosperous life for all.

Clearing the tower is no longer the success to measure. Time for the next steps. They won’t be easy but they’ll be worth it.

https://lnkd.in/ethQraFM

Seriously, if you are a founder looking to raise cash from angel investors you need to buy this book.

It’s the best book by a mile. No fake stories, no high level musings. Clear, useful, and a guide to getting Angels to invest.

I’d hug Phil as well to be fair.

I make startups GROW! Growth Mentor/Coach /Advisory /Tech Angel. Creating exceptional companies with exceptional founders.

To say I'm chuffed would be an understatement. 

I've just been advising someone in the Valley!

I've had lots of gigs advising founders around the world, but the Valley! My first gig there - and it was so helpful to spend a few hours getting a pitchdeck right armed with the wealth of knowledge I've gained and shared in AngelThink. 

Direct quote - "Phil - this is the one slide that if I were there I'd hug you!" Phew! Escaped that one 😊 . 

As an aside it's been really interesting to understand some similarities and differences between UK and US healthcare systems. Another time maybe.

To help founders - for the month of January only - my publisher has put AngelThink into their January sale.

You can get this highly-acclaimed book now (until Jan 31st only) at a discount (£10 instead of £15) from publisher browndogbooks dot uk with the discount code JanuarySale2026 while they have stocks. It’s in the Category - Academic, Business & Reference. 

Now is the year to find your edge - like many others have done. You can read all the really positive reviews on Amazon – almost all 5 ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐. 

Enjoy.

What are you particularly good at? And, are you going to do something with it?

I just finished The Precipice (by Toby Ord)and it has that quiet, unsettling quality of a book that keeps rearranging how you see the world in your head.

Every single page has something that made me see things in a new light and perhaps it resonated with me as well because of the long term view built in to the narrative.

We are but a tiny minority in the history of humanity. With so many more to come after us. We have a responsibility to those who will follow.

The 80,000 hours concept turns a career from a CV into a moral object. Not a ladder, not a sequence of roles, but a single, finite resource. A block of time you will burn through whether you choose carefully or not.

80000 hours is roughly:
• 40 years
• 48 weeks a year
• 40 hours a week

Ord’s point isn’t “optimise your happiness” or “find your passion”. This book plays for stakes much higher than that. If the future of humanity is fragile, then what you point those hours at actually matters. Some uses of those hours reduce risk, build resilience, create options. Others are distractions.

Where this gets really interesting for me and my Moonshot Method is that is reframes career choice as mission design, not job choice.

A few ways this idea becomes powerful in practice:

First, a career as a long-range mission, not a series of gigs

Ord is saying; you are already on a deep-space mission. (If he were a Moonshot graduate 🙂) The only real question is whether you bothered to set a destination.

This aligns beautifully with my Moonshot framing. Navigation first. If you don’t choose what matters, the world will choose for you, usually in very small, noisy increments.

Secondly, 80,000 hours makes trade-offs unavoidable

The uncomfortable implication is that saying yes to something decent is often saying no to something important.

Ord’s book forces a brutal but clarifying question:

“Where am I unusually useful?

Third, it reframes ambition as responsibility

There’s a subtle moral upgrade here.

Ambition isn’t ego or status seeking. It’s not about being impressive. It’s about recognising that if you have rare skills, pattern recognition, credibility, or access, then playing small is not neutral. It’s a choice with external consequences.

That’s a hard idea, but a grown-up one.

Finally, it’s a powerful way to talk about careers without sounding preachy

Not:
“You should save the world.”

But
“You already have this asset. What are you going to do with it?”

This is the mistake we keep making.

We design programmes, frameworks, calls, and governance structures and then ask why brave innovators and leaders don’t appear.

"We need a mindset change!" we all shout.

Bravery does not respond to process.
It responds to permission.

People take risks when uncertainty is allowed
When failure is treated as tuition
When systems adapt instead of punish

We should not start by constructing safety rails.
We should start with people willing to climb.

A true Moonshot Factory graduate and a great example of a founder relentlessly working and working to drive it forward.

So cool to see this as a real thing now.

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I use #Pipeliner for the main business because it is a clear and visual view of the stages of the Pipeline. My new love is likely to be #Parma for its simplicity

Sign up to be the first to know when we launch our "Mastering the Boardroom" course: https://zcl-139851557.hubspotpagebuilder.eu/sign-up-to-be-notified-of-mastering-the-boardroom-course-launch

Grab our Board Paper Templates: the-moonshot-factory.teachable.com/p/my-downloadable-544666

the-moonshot-factory

sas-environmental-services-ltd

sas-production-services

surface-active-solutions

The first bionic hand, solely powered and controlled through body motion. 🦾 

Our latest case study showcases Metacarpal Prosthetics and their development of a bionic hand prototype at the Higgs Centre, supported by access to funding and expertise through the Higgs Business Incubation Centre (Higgs BIC). 

Read the Metacarpal case study on our website ➡️ https://lnkd.in/eSpQgtS4 

STFC Business & Innovation | STFC | Metacarpal Prosthetics | Fergal Mackie | Ruairidh Henderson

A short part of my conversation with John Glover on innovation in Scotland.

Experienced Journalist & Communications Specialist | Expert in Storytelling, Media Relations & Strategic Content Creation

A sneakpeak of my conversation with Mark Zwinderman discussing university spin-outs and his suggestions on what needs to change to help spin-outs.

A great programme that has benefited many founders and businesses. If this may be right for you I suggest you seriously consider applying.

Enthusiastically educating entrepreneurs 🚀 I empower and equip founders to grow ventures faster through training, coaching and resources. 💡 CleanTech Accelerator Manager. 🔋 TEDx Speaker. 📣 Entrepreneur 🌱

Oh go on then...as a New Year treat, how about a 1 week extension to applications to the TechX Accelerator? 🚀

Instead of closing this evening, applications to the next cohort of our Net Zero Technology Centre Accelerator now close on Sunday 11th January 2026 at 23:59GMT 🚨 

£50K in funding. 💷 3 months of training.💡100+ mentor, partner, industry, investor connections. 🤝 Are you tempted? There is now still time. EnergyTech startups that are TRL 3-6 head to www.netzerotc.com/techx 🌍

If you know any startups in renewables, carbon capture, energy storage, hydrogen, alternative fuels, or industrial decarbonisation - tag them below. 🔋

For anyone who has run a startup accelerator - you'll know the excitement (and stress) the final week of promotion brings. 😅 Let's hope Mariah and I look this happy once the final numbers are in! 

You'll spend hours looking at the same graph - number of applications started and finished day-by-day. 📈 Every year, it's always the same hockey stick - hundreds of applications submitted in the final hours. ⏰ 

Those final hours are now a bit further away, so plenty of time to get your video ready, application form complete and be one step closer to £50K booster for your startup. 🏆

👋 Follow Edward Pollock for content on startups, entrepreneurship and unlocking potential.

#Accelerator #EnergyTech #Funding #Startup #Entrepreneurship

What is a Moonshot? Do you have one?

Quick and simple test for you. The photograph test.

Do you have a mental image of what success looks like and when this picture will be taken?

Apollo Moonshot: astronaut on the moon next to American flag.

Eden project: gorgeous domes in an old quarry in Cornwall.

HS2? Who knows. Not a Moonshot.

What’s your photograph?

Would you pay for your child to sit next to a quiet kid in class? Or near the whiteboard?

My daughter Amanda used Claude AI to create an app for teachers to quickly and easily re-arrange kids in the classroom. They can set scores for chattiness, good at math or reading, exclude kids from sitting next to each other. The AI quickly create a seating plan. Brilliant!

My entrepreneur brain then pushed it into Bonkers territory. If parents pay £30k for a private school, why not Ryanair them?

£50 to sit up front. £100 to have your kid sit next to someone good at math. £20 for a seat near the window. Cash for the school! 

Then! A market place for kids to sell their seats in class to each other. Don't like where you are sitting? Want Leon's seat? Offer him two Twirls and a Twix...

Brilliant or Bonkers the podcast is back for season 2. 

Link to listen on Youtube below. Find us on Apple Podcasts as well.

https://lnkd.in/eamCaANc

Innovation needs Rewilding. Time to convert the plantation into something more exciting.

The jungle has no Chief Jungle Officer deciding which tree gets more rain and nutrients. There's no selection committee picking "the fastest growing species" and starving everything else.

Yet the jungle creates more life, more resilience, more adaptation than any plantation ever will.

The plantation? It needs constant intervention. Fertilisers. Pesticides. Massive resources devoted to killing "weeds" and propping up the single chosen winner.

A mistake often made in innovation is when we act like we can pick winners early. We pour resources into "the best idea" and systematically starve everything else. But breakthrough innovation doesn't work like that.

The messy ecosystem matters. It doesn't need "fixing". The "slow growers" matter. The weird edge cases matter. The unexpected connections between completely different species matter.

The uncomfortable truth is that real innovation ecosystems appear to be inefficient, messy, and impossible to control. That's not a bug. It's the entire point.

We need to rewild our innovation ecosystem. Let the jungle grow.

It's messy but way more exciting.

“Equity is seen as this really valuable thing... So don’t give up too much equity. The point that I make is that actually, equity is what you need to grow the business. It’s the fuel for growth.”

Scotland’s university spin-out ecosystem is “improving”; equity stakes at record lows (~12%), 243 active spin-outs ranking third in the UK, new initiatives launching. 

Yet the gap with MIT, Stanford, and Silicon Valley is widening, not closing.
In my latest deep-dive with serial entrepreneur & spin-out advisor Mark Zwinderman (25+ years in the ecosystem), we expose what the progress masks:
Power dynamics that remain broken even at 12% university stakes 
Professors still claiming 10–30% as non-participants 
PhD students negotiating with supervisors who control their careers 
Reimbursement grants requiring 120% upfront cash → zombie companies surviving on handouts, never scaling 
12-month programs for 10-year deep-tech journeys 

Mark’s core insight cuts deep:
“Equity is seen as this really valuable thing... So don’t give up too much equity. The point that I make is that actually, equity is what you need to grow the business. It’s the fuel for growth.”

The stakes? 138,000 potential jobs and £22bn in lost annual revenue if Scotland doesn’t fix the foundations.

Read the full analysis here, linked in comments. Video, find it on YouTube, also linked in comments.

New Year, new and improved network?

Last year I was lucky enough to run into Richard Rosser who runs the B4 Business Network in Oxfordshire. As I moved to this part of the world 2 years ago from Scotland I had no network really.

I was looking for something different and definitely found it in the B4 network. To say it is run with passion is the understatement of the year. 

I can't recommend the B4 community enough, and the tireless work by Richard (literally, as he is doing a a million pushups or so in January) sets it apart.

Check out the B4 info and events. It's not your standard networking. Good people, good food, good locations. A real effort to connect the elements that make up the business ecosystem in Oxfordshire. Charities, businesses, universities, and government.

Of course we also partnered on the Moonshot Sessions Rhodes House starting in February.

If you are in #Oxfordshire, B4 may be for you.

Open article: B4 Membership Organisation by b4membership.com

NASA’s Apollo programme ran on three core systems.
Every Kennedy-standard moonshot I’ve studied uses the same pattern. Navigation, Propulsion and life support.

1. NAVIGATION asks “Where exactly are we going?”
Navigation is not about vision statements or slogans. 
Navigation failure looks like apparent momentum, lots of activity, and progress, but no clear arrival point.

2. PROPULSION asks “What resources drive us there?”
Propulsion is not just money or talent, but how resources are configured, constrained, and converted into thrust.
Propulsion failure looks like big ambition, but insufficient acceleration. In other words, lots of effort, little lift.

3. LIFE SUPPORT or “How do we sustain the journey?”
Moonshots fail not at launch, but over time. Life support is the cultural, psychological, and 
Life-support failure looks like early success (Cleared the tower!), which is followed by burnout, politics, drift, or cultural collapse.

When moonshots stall, it is almost never because of ideas.
Normally one of the three buckets is empty, overloaded, or ignored.

Navigation tells you where you are going.
Propulsion determines whether you can move there.
Life support decides whether you last the journey after you clear the tower.

Stephen Gibbens

Accountant for Early Stage Technology Companies

I am the founder of Accountech, the Accountant for Early Stage Technology Companies.

We are the unique combination of a freelance Finance Director and finance department plus an external accountant that exclusively works with impact driven early stage technology companies from either the life sciences/medical device or climate tech sectors.

Since the business was formed in 2002, we have worked with over 90 technology companies in Scotland. We offer a friendly hands-on service that allows early stage technology companies to outsource the finance function and know that it is in safe hands. We are experts in our niche of early stage technology companies with expertise in financial projections, EIS work and R&D tax credits. 

We only work with a limited number of clients at a time and take on a small number of early stage clients each year so that we are able to give you the level of attention that you need and the consistency of the same experienced staff working on the client year after year.

At Accountech, your success is our success.

Our clients range from pre revenue companies starting off to more established companies that have raised investment from angel syndicates or V/C's.

What they have in common is that they are all expanding and have a business model with a ground breaking product that has a substantial potential market and have either raised investment or are looking to raise investment.
Clients typically have a technology endorsed by a history of either Innovate UK or SMART grants.
Our preference is for clients that "do good" , such as addressing climate change or curing disease.

As well as financial projections, EIS work and R&D tax credit claims, we also prepare monthly/quarterly management accounts and cash flow forecasts to carefully monitor the company's "runway", and also provide advice on all finance issues that you may come across in addition to traditional yearend statutory reporting.
We have the relevant experience and knowledge to provide solutions quickly, yet in a cost effective way.

Prior to forming Accountech, I was finance director of a technology company so I have first-hand experience of what our clients experience.

Within the Accountech community, we are able to put you in touch with other clients who have already faced the issues that you are facing.

Please have a look at my LinkedIn recommendations and posts for more on what you can expect as an Accountech client (I love posting about our clients' successes) and at our website which has recently been updated:

www.accountechsolutions.co.uk

Director

I have always resisted posting personal details about other family members on LinkedIn especially about my wife Alison who is a very private person and hates to be the centre of attention such as being in The Scotsman  but there comes a time when you have to try everything.

I have used LinkedIn to raise the profile of our clients and of charities that I support to great effect.

Now I use it because all that matters is to bring our children’s Mum, the best treat giver, poop scooper, dog walker,belly rubber (from a 60th birthday card she opened before she disappeared on Monday), my soulmate home.

I want to thank everyone who has sent messages of support and especially our friends who have dropped everything to walk the streets of Edinburgh in the cold, wet and dark the last two evenings.

Please share and help bring Alison home.

Open article: Police appeal to find woman reported missing in Edinburgh by scotsman.com

Police appeal to find woman reported missing in Edinburgh

Open article: Stephen's fundraiser for Scottish Action for Mental Health by justgiving.com

Stephen's fundraiser for Scottish Action for Mental Health

My first night hosting the Edinburgh meetup of People Planet Pint on my own tonight and thanks very much to everyone who supported me especially our favourite financial modelling expert Tom Hillmann, CFA who was there from the start to help me out.

Later on my co host Constanza Moreno-Sánchez O. and overall PPP supremo Adam Bastock were there to relieve me so it wasn’t that tough a shift in the end.

What is really encouraging me this year is the overlap between different networking groups and between Edinburgh and Glasgow that is happening now - amongst our attendees tonight we had:

Dave Hughes from Founders Meetup - Glasgow

Arielle Vetro from Venture Café Edinburgh

Katie Paterson from the best netwalking group anywhere, the Outsiders 

I feel that if we can just get these different groups working together we can really get something special going!

I’m looking forward to Venture Cafe’s next event next Thursday 22 January and to the next Outsiders walk at Water of Leith Visitor Centre on Friday 30 January (dogs welcome too!). Look forward to following up on some chats from tonight at both of those.

The next People Planet Pint is on the third Thursday of the month at The Innis & Gunn Brewing Company Ltd  pub on Lothian Road as always so Thursday 19 February.

Links in the comments for the sign ups to all of these events.

Thanks to the approx 40 People who came along tonight to get Edinburgh’s People Planet Pint off to a great start in 2026 and we’ll look forward to seeing you again soon!

I always find People Planet Pint the perfect pick me up for all the woes of the world. 
Coming along really cheers me up when you see what everyone else is doing to make the world a better place.

Together we can sort it all out 🙂

My first time at Venture Café Edinburgh tonight.✨

If you love connecting with inspirational, mission-driven people (and enjoy whisky with your tech 🥃), this was definitely the place to be.

A highlight for me was Claudia’s Fireside Chat with Ken Macnamara from Trogenix and Holly Butler from Dxcover which really showed the potential of Scotland's Life Sciences sector. 

We finished the formal part of the evening with Sepi Golzari-Munro giving a fantastic recital of Burns' poems📜 , turning it into my first ever Tech Burns Night.

But it was the networking that really made the event. 🤝

I don’t think that I have ever been in a room with so many people that I genuinely wanted to speak to - some that I have known for years, some who only knew me from LinkedIn, and a few that I have been meaning to connect or reconnect with for ages - some new connections that I'd wanted to meet, some whom I hadn't seen for far too long.

We even managed to convene the unofficial Springsteen Superfans Subcommittee of the startup scene - 70+ Bruce concerts between us 🎸🎤
(Dave Hughes Mark Zwinderman)

One line from Ken particularly hit home for me on this night in particular:

“Everything is here.
 We just need to talk about it more.
 And talk to each other more.” 

That is exactly what Venture Café makes possible and why it is such an important addition to the tech ecosystem. 💡

Huge thanks to Claudia Cavalluzzo, Arielle Vetro, and team for putting on another brilliant event.

An evening with some of my favourite people supporting a really worthwhile charity, The Eric Liddell Community  

An amazing meal at The Caledonian Edinburgh  and some truly inspiring talks and videos which only made me more convinced that we need to invest more to support the ground breaking research in life sciences that is happening in Scotland.

Thank you to John MacMillan MBE and team for all that you do and to the Princess Royal for supporting this and many other worthwhile charities.

Photos with my colleagues, friends and partners in what we aim to achieve who accompanied me last night:

Evelyn Temple 
Lisa Thomson 
Dave Hughes 
Caro Melendez

Link in the comments to the Eric Liddell Community website to find out more about what they do and how you can support them.

🍻People Planet Pint is back for the first time in 2026 this Thursday in Edinburgh.

🗓 Thursday 15 January 2026
📍 The Innis & Gunn Brewing Company Ltd, Lothian Road (opposite the Filmhouse)
🕕 From 6:15pm
🎟 Sign up here:
https://lnkd.in/eQZGZncd

Started at COP26 by Adam Bastock, this humble pub chat has grown into a global movement over the last 4 years:

Here is what 2025 looked like:

🌍 883 meet ups, over 70 per month , across the country and overseas

👥 18,000+ registrations

🍺 6,000+ free drinks (thanks to our sponsor Krystal!)

And since the start:

💬 Over 25,000 people have attended a PPP 


What is People Planet Pint?

It is all about bringing together like-minded folk to talk about sustainability - no panels, no pitches, just purposeful chats over pints.

Whether you are:

🌱 A founder of your own business

🌍 Working in climate

❓ Or just curious about what you can do (and what everyone else is doing) to make a positive difference, you will be very welcome.

I promise that you will leave feeling much more hopeful about the year ahead.

📅 Can't make it this week?

We will be at the Innis & Gunn Brewery Taproom on Lothian Road every third Thursday of the month from now on:

15 January ✅
19 February 🗓
19 March 🗓

Founder Adam can't be in 70 places at once so we have a doppelgänger for when he's not there.

However, this Thursday, to get 2026 off to a great start, we are super privileged and should have the real thing there later on, once Adam makes it through from Glasgow.

👇
So don’t just stand there like a cardboard cutout - come along, grab a drink with Constanza Moreno-Sánchez O. and me and the People Planet Pint collective and have some real person to person conversations that could spark real change.

And as ever, for the first 10 people there, the first drink is on Krystal.

Cheers and Happy New Year! 🍻

A trip from Edinburgh to Dundee on the Ember electric bus again this weekend but this time for leisure rather than business reasons.
It really is the most comfortable and climate friendly way to travel, especially when the weather in Scotland in January is as wild as it was yesterday.

But Scottish football has also overlapped into my work interest of R&D tax credits recently even though I had never envisaged that a tax relief available to our innovative tech start up clients could also be so extensively used by football clubs.

I have been following with interest Paul Rosser, Dan Neidle, the Times and the Courier's investigations of Dundee United's disputed R&D tax credit claims (see Comments for an article from Dan's Tax Policy Associates website summarising if you missed it).

But I have noticed that Paul occasionally refers to Dundee United as "Dundee" so this was an opportunity to remind him (with photographic evidence) that these are two different clubs.

In fact, the walk between the two stadiums, Dens Park and Tannadice is actually the shortest between any two professional football clubs in the UK as I experienced when I passed United’s ground en route to see Heart of Midlothian FC play Dundee (not Dundee United).

As a Hearts fan, this season so far is reminding me of a few universal truths that apply to business as well as football:

⚽ You do not have to be the biggest to come out on top

⚽ The right team, with the right leadership, can overcome just about anything

⚽ Your supporters, your crowd, can make all the difference

And as Craig Gordon, Hearts 43 year old "Scotland's Number 1" goalkeeper showed, experience still has a huge part to play when the going gets tough!

Who knows how the Scottish football season will end this year but it is certainly the most open and exciting in my memory and let's hope that is it is one where there is fair play in all aspects.

May the best team win and win fair and square - in football and business.

📚 It is always a joy to receive a new book in the post but especially so when there is a section about me and Accountech in it! 🙂

Huge thanks to John Lamerton for including us again in his latest book Retention First 🙏

John's previous book The False Exit also featured a few pages about the Accountech flywheel... at this rate, John reckons that I will soon be able to help out doing book signings for him 😄

One of the best parts of being in John’s One Per Cent Club is seeing early drafts of these books, giving feedback, and getting a front-row seat to the writing process. It is the next best thing to writing your own and a real insight into the writing process and how much work is involved before you get to the final product.

✍️ Writing a book is definitely still on my bucket list... but it is tricky to balance with my other goal for this year of starting to work more reasonable hours. 

And my wife reckons that  “life of an accountant” might not be much of a page-turner - “today, I tapped on my calculator” 😂

But with over 1,000 books logged on Goodreads, plus 23 years running Accountech (and 5 years, "walking in our clients' shoes" at a tech startup before that), not to mention supporting nearly 100 tech companies… I reckon that there must be quite a bit of material to tap into.

And more and more of my network are published authors too so I'm not short of role models for inspiration 👇

A few I’ve read, met, or been inspired by:
BARBARA Henderson | Andrew Craig | Bob Burg | Tracy Irwin | Dr Sarah Taylor 🟠 | James Lizars FCCA | Rebecca Bonnington | Ashley Leeds | Matt Winning | Alex Dang | Mark Beaumont | Kate Raworth

And via One Per Cent Club Zoom calls:
Gerald Ratner | Neville Wright | Ben Hunt-Davis MBE

And from book festivals last year:
Jen Stout | Mike Berners-Lee

📖 Any other authors in my network that I have missed?

💬 And for anyone else: do you secretly want to write a book one day, but keep wondering when you will find the time?

👀 Keep an eye out for more posts from me on Retention First as its publication date of 26 February approaches.

It is packed with insights that really align with how I think about clients, retention, and building long-term relationships as reflected in our Accountech company values:

✅ Treat every client as if they were our only client
→ We don’t overstretch ourselves and focus strictly on the right clients who are the right fit for our business and expertise.

✅ Act as a member of our clients’ team
 → Giving clients access to senior staff who are there for the long term and whom they can get to know, like, and trust.

✅ Work with purpose-driven clients
 → So we spend our time supporting those genuinely leaving the world better than they found it.

This was an interesting exercise in speed reading 📚

For all my book loving LinkedIn connections, how did you do?

Once you get in the flow, it was only right at the end that I was struggling but I reckon that comes from training your mind up by reading a lot.

Wealth Management and Tax Planning for Entrepreneurs. Helping business owners feel confident, positive and relaxed about their financial future.

This is amazing!

Can you read it to the end?  ⬇️

Congratulations to our Accountech client, Clyde Hydrogen Systems, on completing their first fully integrated prototype 👏 - a major leap forward in green hydrogen innovation.

At Accountech, we are proud to support some of Scotland’s most exciting startups from the very beginning. 

With Clyde Hydrogen, that has meant being hands-on from day one:
helping with SEIS/EIS 💸, R&D tax credit claims 🧪, financial modelling 📊,management accounts, statutory accounts and grant submissions 📄.

🔬 As someone who follows Advanced Research + Invention Agency (ARIA) Research + Invention Agency), whom Clyde Hydrogen founder Mark Symes also works for , and a regular listener to the founder of Clyde Hydrogen investor Ecotricity, Dale Vince’s ZeroCarbonista podcast each week 🎧, this one is of particular interest to me.

💡 ARIA’s support for initiatives like Venture Café Edinburgh whose third event I’ll be attending next Thursday (22 Jan) shows how Scotland’s startup ecosystem is really evolving into something special now.

🤝 Clyde Hydrogen’s backers also include Zinc, who support another Accountech client SolarSub. 
Like us, they are committed to impact and focusing on the health of people and the planet.

🌍 Scotland’s tech sector is buzzing right now and we are just getting started.

📖 Full story in The Scotsman:

Open article: Milestone breakthrough for Scots hydrogen energy pioneer on staggering journey by scotsman.com

Milestone breakthrough for Scots hydrogen energy pioneer on staggering journey

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