All mentors

Denis Oakley

Founder & Lead Mentor

Leicestershire, United Kingdom (+00:00 UTC) Englishfrom Birmingham, United Kingdom
Usually responds in 1 day
$50 / hour
Price per hour
60 min
Time Blocks Available
4.98
28 reviews / 36 sessions
Tue
27
Next availability

Bio

Startups that I work focus on - What is the customers pain? - Is it a pain that is sufficiently bad that they will accept an something that barely works as a solution? - are there enough desperate cases who will pay to create a business? Everything else is bullshit. Or comes after that. When it doesn't you fail (or occasionally get lucky - and no, that's not you or you wouldn't be here ) I teach entrepreneurship at Warwick University. I run research commercialisation programmes for academics. I run large scale accelerators for some of the largest tech companies in the world. I have f****d up a surprisingly large number of times in the 20+ years I've been an entrepreneur. In part that's what makes me a good mentor - I've failed miserably - and I've learned the lessons. On the other side, I'm neurodivergent with ASD and ADHD and a few others. I've seen how my mind screws me and learned, (still learning) lots of hacks to get more out of the massive advantages that my ND gives me. I've done philosophy, engineering and business degrees, supervise phDs and am amazed by how little I know, and how ignorant I am. Doesn't stop the questions or the exploring

Expertise

  • Go to market strategy

    What have I done? I've failed a lot. Sometimes through inexperience. Sometimes through a bad brief. Sometimes because I couldn't think of anything better to do and data from failed experiments seemed to offer the best path forward. I know the basics, done most types of marketing activity for new startups and helped a lot of entrepreneurs see their market differently. That seems to help get traction

  • Growth marketing

    20+ years of intrapreneurship, entrepreneurship and startup advisory. Focused on pre-seed and seed B2B startups. - 60x sales in 2 months - $2 million in 1st-year sales for my first startup

  • Idea validation

    I hate ideas. They are the most pernicious source of entrepreneurial failure out there. Seriously. Most people with ideas are idiots (me included) But they do get you thinking about problems, and that, it turns out is quite useful

  • Product market fit

    I really do business model innovation - but product-market fit is the closest we get to that. This is normally big picture stuff on how to approach the market, how to design the business model and also how to pivot - if required

  • Sales

    B2B sales - Deep experience in startup B2B sales process in Europe and SE Asia - Field Sales, Partnerships, client POCs, Exhibitions, conferences, cold lead gen -

Toolkit

  • Buffer logo

    Buffer

    I've used it for 13 years. This is here as a skill to show my breadth of knowledge, rather than to have a focused session on using Buffer to grow your business

  • HubSpot logo

    HubSpot

    I've used it for a year. This is here as a skill to show my breadth of knowledge, rather than to have a focused session on using Mailchimp to grow your business. That said I've been using inbound marketing as a technique for a decade

  • Mailchimp logo

    Mailchimp

    I've used it for 13 years. This is here as a skill to show my breadth of knowledge, rather than to have a focused session on using Mailchimp to grow your business

  • Salesforce logo

    Salesforce

    Designed built and ran a totally customised force.com platform that helped us get to the semi-finals of HSBC Startup Stars. Not an expert on SFDC by any means and technical knowledge is rusty

  • WordPress logo

    WordPress

    I've used it for 13 years. This is here as a skill to show my breadth of knowledge, rather than to have a focused session on using WordPress to grow your business

Industries

  • Consulting

    I work with B2B entrepreneurs mainly in the engineering/manufacturing scientific space. Whilst I won't always (often) understand the technical details of your idea/product, I will rapidly understand how it applies to you market and help you decide your next steps.

Experience

  • University of Warwick - WMG

    Visiting Lecturer & Innovation Module Leader

    I teach and lead innovation programs at the University of Warwick, working across multiple schools to develop technical talent in innovation methodology. Key responsibilities: • Module Leader for BS936: Entrepreneurship and Commercialisation in the MSc Biotechnology, Bioprocessing and Business Management and MSc Medical Biotechnology and Business Management programmes (School of Life Sciences) - Develop curriculum focused on validating technical innovations in life sciences - Train scientists in market validation methodologies for biotech R&D - Teach practical frameworks for preventing wasted research funding • Lecturer on Innovation and Entrepreneurship MSc at WMG (UK's top-rated entrepreneurship masters) - Teach Disruptive Innovation and Business Model Innovation modules - Focus on technical validation frameworks for engineering innovations - Provide real-world case studies of R&D waste prevention • Supervisor for MSc Innovation Projects at WMG and WBS, including MBA innovation projects - Guide students through market validation of technical concepts - Mentor engineering/technical students in customer-centric innovation - Apply industry validation frameworks to academic innovation projects • Academic Research & Publication - Published peer-reviewed research on innovation validation methodologies in technical organizations - Study focused on preventing R&D waste through structured market validation processes - Contribute to the academic foundation for evidence-based innovation practices This academic work complements my client practice by connecting cutting-edge innovation research with practical application in large technical organisations

  • The RSA (The royal society for arts, manufactures and commerce)

    Fellow

    The RSA Fellowship is an inclusive global community committed to finding better ways of thinking about and delivering change. Our Fellows have been at the forefront of social change for over 250 years and continue to support the RSA. Through our research, experience, and global reach, the RSA with its Fellows unites people and ideas to resolve the challenges of our time. As a Fellow I work with everyone I meet, in almost every interaction, to create positive change that will uplift them, our species and the world. Sometimes it is small, a few words or a gesture. Often it is the work of months, delving deeply into ideas and seeing how they can be shaped so that they can have the biggest impact on this wondrous world. So much to discover, so little time

  • Warwick Innovation District

    Startup Mentor at Deep Tech Innovation Centre

    As a mentor at the Deep Tech Innovation Centre I support students, researchers, alumni & local start-up companies in exploring the commercial potential of their innovations in areas ranging from Advanced Materials and Biotechnology to Blockchain, Quantum Computing and Robotics. The one thing they all have in common is that they are using original scientific and engineering research to offer innovative solutions to global problems. The focus of my mentoring is to help shape our startups business models and business plans and become investment ready

  • 500 Global

    Startup Mentor

    500 Startups portfolio companies come to me with questions about their business models and how to pivot. They have frequently got some level of product-market fit but are not achieving the growth that they need. I am also a resident mentor for corporate accelerator programmes - bother intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial. The business model innovation sessions are mentee driven and are focused on addressing particular business model problems. Problems that we have worked on include: - How to pivot from a B2C to B2B market? - Creating new social networks in a space dominated by massive incumbents - Disrupting existing medical device suppliers - Building a scalable sales model in the healthcare sector - Reworking value propositions to increase conversion rates in retail analytics

  • Denis Oakley & Co

    Head of Business Model Innovation
    •denis-oakley.com

    I design business models. For more check out my LinkedIn profile or my website...

    B2B

  • (MaGIC) Malaysian Global Innovation & Creativity Centre

    Entrepreneurship Mentor

    I help catalyze creativity and innovation in MaGIC supported entrepreneurs. My focus is in helping them design robust business models that can disrupt industries and sectors. With tech startups the focus is often on the nature of networks and how they grow and fail. For every mentee I work with we work on understanding the market and looking for areas where we can successful enter and create a space large enough for initial growth. These often have some feature that protects the new entrant but allows for rapid growth once product/market or product/channel fit is achieved While many tech startups use agile for their software development I prefer a lean startup approach for finding product market fit and channel market fit. This is hypothesis driven and with low cost experiments is an effective search strategy to reach traction cost effectively and with low risk.

  • Andalus Ventures

    Startup Advisor

    How do you change the world? At Andalus Ventures we are creating a new breed of startup . Our portfolio companies are Islamic through and through, having at their heart core ideas of Islamic philosophy and faith. This is absolutely fascinating as we look for business models based on Islamic principles and then test and validate them. Do they create value? Do Muslims value their faith above money? Can a Muslim focused startup deliver such good value that it also appeals to non-muslims? Lots of facinating questions and proud to be involved with this wonderful project

  • Oakley Steel Limited

    Director Business Transformation

    In three years at Oakley Steel I have completely restructured the company to make it significantly more profitable and effective. I refocused the company from being a general steel trader to being a manufacturer's agent targeting companies that required very specialised carbon steel plates. To do this we covered all parts of the business from lead generation, sales conversion rates, process optimisation and automation to partner relationships and business structure. • Overall P&L responsibility • Negotiated long time agency agreements with principal suppliers. • Managed sales process and designed and implemented a sales automation and quoting process on Salesforce that enabled us to reduce cost of sales by 70%, time to quote by 80% and doubled conversion rate • Revised marketing strategy to focus on key customer avatars and product segments and increased quality leads and sales significantly. • Designed and built new content marketing based lead generation system that included a new website that consistently ranked in top 3 and tripled organic visitors in 12 months • Introduced realtime KPI monitoring of all employees • Organised multiple exhibitions and tradeshows and visited hundreds of customers across Asia. • Implemented new accounting system and financial controls

  • Oakley Steel Limited

    Marketing Director

    Oakley Steel is a specialist steel trading company focusing on the delivery of ultra-heavy carbon steel plate to the oil and gas industry • Successfully founded and ran a steel trading company building a regional office of 10 staff and $4 million in turnover • Designed & implemented a multi-channel content marketing strategy which gave a 24% global market share of target SEO keywords and increased enquiry frequency by 30%. • Achieved finals of HSBC Startup Stars competition in 2009 beating over 2000 other entrants. • Rolled out salesforce.com as the key platform for driving sales & marketing performance

  • E.ON

    Security Risk Manager

    I am responsible for the security of Energy Services on of EON UK's business units. The roles covers coordinating and leading business continuity, managing fraud risk and managing and investigating criminal activity against our employees and the company.

  • Mott MacDonald

    Railway Approvals Technical Coordinator

    Company expert on the assessment of rail interoperability Design, development and management of assessment strategy Project management and auditing of interoperability assessments UK representative on AEIF Conformity Assessment Group for the Railway Industry Association What did I do? I sat down with the EU directive and the UK Regulations and worked out how the GBP2 billion CTRL (Now HS1) project should be assessed and approved for operation. Nothing like the High Speed Interoperability Directive had ever been seen before on the railways and the HSE (HMRI) was the wrong body to write the regulations implementing it into UK law. As a result there were significant issues with the UK regulations being contradictory to the EU requirements. I persuaded at MMRA, the CTRL consortia and HMRI(HSE) to approve the methodology that I proposed and this led to the assessment of CTRL being done significantly faster and better and the UK Regulations being changed and updated to reflect this.

  • Mott MacDonald

    Signalling Design Engineer

    I was a signalling design engineer responsible for a variety of signalling consultancy roles. These included providing a feasibility study for the resignalling of Sandbach-Wilmslow in Northwest England where I ran a team of 4 designers and CAD operators. • Signalling Design • Axle Counters • Relay Interlocking • Signalling Layout Design • Proposal writing and estimating

  • Westinghouse Signals

    Junior Signalling Design Engineer

    I was a junior signalling engineer designing relay based interlocking circuits and signalling layouts for various projects on the West Coast Main Line and across the Midlands • AMIRSE Licence • Signalling Testing • Relay Interlocking Design • Level Crossing • Axle Counters

  • UK Ministry of Defence

    Computer Scientist

    I provided analytical support for modelling and general IT support - GIS - Terrain Mapping - VAX/VMS - Unix

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