After just short of 20 years with LSEG and its predecessors, I’m leaving at the end of 2025. It’s been a fantastic journey and I’m grateful for the experiences and the friendship, but equally I’m excited about the opportunity to do something different, to get closer to the enormous, vibrant ecosystem of smaller firms developing new tools, content and capabilities within Financial Markets.

One need only stare at some of the ecosystem diagrams that now proliferate to understand innovation is pervasive across the industry. I have two areas of particular passion, firstly content and analytics businesses, and, secondly, the intersection of AI capabilities and Financial Markets user workflow.

These two areas are both seeing huge demand and growth. In content terms, the alternative data industry is booming, while for decision support tools, AI is helping to fundamentally alter the research paradigm, helping users and firms to make sense of the firehose of news and financial data they must digest and interpret daily. While I’m impressed by the tech itself, it’s important to remember the tech evolution that was already occurring in Financial Markets, data science was a critical skill long before ChatGPT arrived on November 30, 2022 and it is rare to find ‘genuine’ fundamental only research processes today, almost all now incorporate some quantitative elements.

Next steps

In the course of working for LSEG, I’ve met with dozens, maybe even hundreds of CEOs and CROs in recent years. In fact as part of market research discussions for CCAS, I have met with 47 so far just in Q4! One very clear data point that emerges from these discussions relates to their background. Most are intelligent and highly numerate, most bring software engineering and data science backgrounds to their roles. Most have the capability to be, or have been, a CTO. It is far rarer for them to come from sales and revenue areas, few would have opted for a CRO / CCO style of career.

What CCAS will bring to these firms is 20 years of industry experience, in product, marketing and sales. This will be both strategic – the what are you planning to do, which markets and personas you are targeting, how are you approaching customer problem statements or product focus? But equally critical, is the execution. The how. Do you have a ready customer target list? What are you telling them? How are you executing on the sales plan? How are you measuring execution? How are you building out your team?

It is daunting to realise the profound cascading impact that early mistakes can have. A poor incentive plan, in hiring, poor territory allocation, channel models, not to mention in the fundamental company org design. Almost all firms can benefit from independent, experienced, highly analytical help on the non-technology side of the business. Product and Business strategy, Marketing and Enablement, Sales and go-to-market, there is a lot of dark art to these topics.

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As firms move from through the product and firm lifecycle, from early POC engagement to product market fit, early sales and first sellers, fractional CROs, through to later funding rounds and scale-up, there is enormous value in access to executives who have been there before, who’ve made the calls and, perhaps, the mistakes they’re contemplating.

I’ve spent a career in sales management roles, in customer strategy roles, building the plans and KPIs and the processes that measure them. Getting the sales structures, incentives, brand and product positioning, commercials and dozens of other factors right will get you to revenue goals far more quickly, driving higher valuation multiples. Beyond the financial implications, a good advisor can act as a critical force multiplier that helps the Board, CEO and leadership team to focus on execution, knowing they have the right people, process and strategy in place.

Starting anything is hard, new habits form, skills need to be redeployed in new ways. It’s daunting, but equally it is exciting and the one thing I have full confidence on is the timing, there is so much growth and investment in the industry today, as its leaders wrestle with change across markets, technology and (as always) the regulatory picture. If you’d like to learn more on how we could help, please reach out.