At the heart of being a Founder is a desire to make something better, to make a difference - and at the heart of being a successful Founder is the ability to do this with purpose and for the long term. To succeed for the long term requires the unhelpful dogma of shareholder value to be replaced, as it is, by the old and much better common sense of creating shared value for all stakeholders. This means, that as a Founder I have a responsibility, extrinsic to me and to the firm. For me, making Founders Pledge is a natural thing to do. And if doing it publicly can help stimulate other tech Founder's to do the same - then together we can help contribute even more and play our part in helping make the world a better place.
James is a Director of FutureAgenda.org, an open-source think tank and advisory delivering foresight, strategy and innovation to some of the world’s leading organisations (e.g. Amazon, BP, Mastercard, WWF). James leads the Strategy practise where recent work includes leading whole organisation strategy development for WWF and Which?
He is also a co-founder of #voicefortheplanet, the coalition aimed at securing a global deal for nature in 2021, launched at the World Economic Forum in 2019.
He was previously a co-founder and Executive Director of Zopa, a disruptor and the world’s first P2P lender. Prior to this he was Strategy Director at Egg during its high growth phase. He has been an advisor to a number of innovative finance payers including Seedrs, Tandem, Loot and LandBay.
He also advises a number of social ventures and charities including the RSPB (where he was previously a Trustee), the Suffolk Wildlife Trust, the GoodLab, GreenThing and as Chair of Finance.Earth, enabling purposeful investment into conservation, climate and communities.
He holds a (very out of date) MBA from INSEAD and a 1st class honours degree from University College, London. He is a birdwatcher and was fortunate enough to be part of a 3-person team who re-discovered three species of bird, considered by many to be extinct.
