Founders Circle

Andy Milner is a Founder and Managing Director of DNASTREAM, the growing Enterprise IT Consultancy based in the Surrey Research Park. DNASTREAM has over 40 staff and a revenue of £6 million and focuses on service companies with customers including Northern Ireland Water, JLA, RES and Sureserve. DNASTREAM started life in SetSquared the local incubator on the research park. Prior to that Andy held senior positions at Total Energy, Wipro and SAP. He holds a degree in Mining Engineering and an executive MBA from Henley Management College. 

His industry expertise is packaged software, energy, utilities, insurance and service companies. 

As a mentor Andy has areas of interest in business finance and funding, sales and marketing and managing alliances and partnerships. 

Outside of work Andy enjoys road cycling and is the chair of Charlotteville Cycling Club. He also acts as a school governor. 

“Things take much longer than you think. Really plan your cash flow.”

With over 25 years experience in Sales across diverse industries and now running her own Sales Consultancy, Training & Coaching business, Anita focuses on empowering, educating and delivering ethical sales and professional skills support to individuals as well as organisations. She enjoys building confidence and changing mindsets, especially on how to present yourself – as everyone has the capability to present or sell themselves effectively in interviews or sales meetings - and in life generally! 

Anita has supported a number of business owners through their growth journey, leveraging her passion for sales, training, client engagement, networking, recruitment, as well as process improvement to engage new clients, shape market propositions and scale teams.

Her passion is Learning & Development which has also led to her working with education institutions like Bournemouth University in order to prepare, guide, and educate students on the real-life skills they need to be successful.

Anita always delivers engaging, fun and enjoyable experiences for all!

Bo Ekberg is an entrepreneur, strategic advisor, board director and former multinational executive with extensive international leadership experience across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Over a 20+ year corporate career, he held senior commercial and operational leadership roles with full P&L responsibility across multiple international markets. More recently, he has focused on entrepreneurial ventures, strategic advisory work and growth-stage businesses in the UK and internationally. Bo co-founded Task360, a UK-based crowd-sourcing platform, helping lead the business from early development through rapid growth and ultimately the successful sale of the company to a private equity-backed international competitor. His experience spans entrepreneurship, international expansion, organisational development, governance and operational scaling. Through the Surrey Business School Founders Circle, Bo is particularly interested in helping founders understand the practical realities of building businesses — from transforming early-stage ideas into commercially viable ventures through to managing the increasing complexity that comes with growth. His approach combines entrepreneurial experience with deep commercial and operational expertise, with a particular focus on execution, leadership, decision-making and the practical challenges founders face as businesses evolve from ideas into organisations.

Chris has spent more than 20 years leading marketing teams across EMEA for some of the world's most successful technology and cybersecurity brands, including CrowdStrike, RSA Security and Commvault. During that time, he built and scaled marketing functions and teams delivering more than $500m in pipeline, with a consistent focus on connecting marketing activity to revenue rather than vanity metrics.

He founded Big Brand Blueprint, a marketing strategy and advisory practice that translates enterprise-level thinking into clear, actionable strategy for startups, scaleups and growing businesses. The core belief: smaller organisations deserve the same strategic clarity as global brands, without the bureaucracy that usually comes with it.

He is the author of two marketing and business strategy books – The Big Brand Blueprint and The Entrepreneurs Marketing Manual – both written for founders and SME leaders who want marketing that drives real commercial outcomes.

Chris is an active founder, with further ventures across property, personal finance and digital publishing. He is also a guest lecturer and visiting practitioner at several UK universities and has a specific interest in helping student entrepreneurs close the gap between academic thinking and the commercial realities of building a business from scratch.

Emily graduated from Surrey in 2017 with a BSc in Business Management. She was awarded the Overall Contribution Award and was a Course Representative in her Final Year. She has since gone on to found Valente London, a high-end luxury women’s footwear brand. She has taken the business from a start-up to receiving SEIS investment and has also been granted a patent. Valente London launches in 2026, the culmination of a 9 year story. 

I started off my career on an IT graduate scheme with BOC Gases on the Surrey Research Park implementing SAP across the globe.  After 5 years at BOC I joined SAP as a programme director for British Airways (the largest SAP programme in Europe at the time) and then moved into Sales for SAP.  My last role at SAP was running Education sales across EMEA, a EUR 220m division with 100 direct sales reports.  SAP was a great place to learn the art of sales.  After 11 years I left SAP to join Capita in order to run sales for the majority of a FTSE100 business.  I looked after public sector sales on the board of a FTSE250 equivalent size organisation called Capita Government Services.  I joined Capita as it was a very entrepreneurial and business focussed environment and it certainly delivered.  

I followed the former CEO of Capita to run growth for a business his Private Equity business had bought called Grayce Group.  Grayce hires, trains, and deploys bright graduate talent into the market competing against and working with the major consultancies.  In 2024 I had the opportunity to leave Grayce with a successful growth story of growing it from £0 value to £150m, having completed 5 years, originally agreeing to 2 or 3 years to kick start the business.

I have established a growth focussed business called Partner Management Group that is supporting Founder, PE & VC businesses to accelerate their growth.  I work with some of the most active investors in London and ambitious start up and scaling businesses to grow their valuations for the next round of transactions.

For the past 7 years I have also been a Trustee and most recently Chair of West Horsley Place Trust, a charity based in West Horsley founded by Bamber Gascoigne known for his hosting of University Challenge.  

I am a Londoner who went to school and university here. Having read modern languages I joined a multinational company BOC and worked for them for a few years in the UK when I was awarded a scholarship to study for an MBA. This I did at Bayes and learnt a lot from this excellent experience. 

Having returned to BOC I was asked to set up their healthcare business in Japan spending a couple of years there. With this success I went to Singapore to do something similar which worked out well commercially. Whilst there I was offered a directorship of Glaxo which I accepted and spent 2 more stimulating years there. 

I then returned to UK and worked for the Glaxo group for another 4 years when I joined a smaller manufacturing company to prepare me for the big move to run my own business as a healthcare entrepreneur. 

In 2007 I established my own company called Ardmore Healthcare focussing upon the UK market to supply non invasive gastro products and software.. The company grew rapidly in terms of revenue, profitability and market share, reaching 70%+ in 2018 when a hedge fund company offered me a big number to sell. Negotiations were completed in 2019 when I withdrew from AHC quite satisfied with the result. 

From then I have done a lot of sailing and have been lecturing at 5 different universities. 

“Innovation is key to success”

Lee Lam is an award winning business strategist and founder of Your Startup Partner and the business advisory platform Adviser In Your Pocket. After 24 years in financial services technology, in COO and Chief of Staff roles,  Lee is a blend of risk-taking, change-making creativity, with the security, safety and logic of a COO who can implement change and growth without any dramas.  

Her mission is to build a strong startup democracy.  She breaks down barriers to starting and growing a business and growing into successful organisations of the future. 

She is sector agnostic. Her focus is on ensuring that the external facing business model and the internal facing operating model are synchronised and the strategy for growth is both stable enough to grow at whatever speed is necessary, but agile enough to flex as necessary to take advantages of opportunities or avoid risks.

 “I believe that the status quo should be constantly challenged and validated, because I believe we can always be better”.

Sam Ulph is a multi-venture entrepreneur and investor with over 25 years' experience building and backing businesses across hospitality, drinks, property and technology.

He founded StarStock, a direct digital route-to-market marketplace for the UK on-trade, partnering with Heineken, Diageo, Coca Cola, Sainsbury’s, Morrisons, Tesco/Booker and Asda before exiting in 2023. He went on to found Footfall, a hospitality connector platform bringing together innovative scale-ups and the CEOs and CFOs of the UK's leading pub and bar groups.

Sam is Chairman of ChargedUp, the portable powerbank rental business serving the hospitality sector, and runs Jera, a specialist lender providing £250k–£10m loans against fine wine collections. He also sits as a Non-Executive Director of Totssy, an AI-powered grocery picking robotics business based in Lebanon, where he leads the UK market strategy targeting major grocers including Tesco, Morrisons and Ocado.

Sue Duris is a startup advisor and mentor with deep roots in the Silicon Valley, Scotland, and London startup ecosystems. As a CMO in early-stage and growth-stage companies, she has partnered closely with founders and leadership teams to tackle the challenges that determine whether startups scale or stall — product-market fit, ideal customer profile (ICP) definition, and the customer and marketing strategies that turn early traction into sustainable growth.

Sue brings a rare combination of operator experience and customer strategy expertise. She knows what it takes to build go-to-market from the ground up, align product direction with real customer need, and create the foundational clarity that lets teams move fast with confidence.

Alongside her startup work, Sue is Principal Consultant of M4 Communications and a globally recognised customer experience (CX) thought leader, working with scaling organisations on CX strategy, voice-of-the-customer programmes, and AI governance. She holds an MBA from UC Irvine, and is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and Prosci® Certified Change Management Practitioner.

She is a speaker, guest lecturer, and trusted advisor to founders and senior executives on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sven Hughes is the founder-CEO at Enigma Strategic Communications. He provides insights and communications support to governments and leading global brands. 

He was awarded ‘Businessperson of the Year 2024’ at both the CSBAs and SBAs, and ‘Creative Entrepreneur of the Year 2023’ at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards. Enigma has also been listed among the Elite Business Top 100 UK SMEs for the last two years. 

He is the author of, 'Verbalisation: the power of words to drive change' (Amazon) and makes regular media and lecture appearances, advocating for the use of ethical strategic communications.

Areas of expertise:

• Government, political and security communications.
• Marketing, audience insights and messaging strategies.

“To become a successful entrepreneur, you need to be the Swiss Army Penknife of business. With a broad range of skills for every eventuality. Once you have these, you become unstoppable.”