Paul Sturrock
Early-stage startup expert | Co-Founder at Climbworks
About
I’ve spent my whole career working with startups at every stage from ideation to scale as a founder, early stage investor, and mentor. I can help you “earn your secret” and identify your Minimum Viable Segment at the beginning, as well as design a revenue model with unit economics fit for scaling once you’ve got product-market fit. What really interests me is helping people make a living by following their curiosity, doing what they like to do, are good at, and care about. I’ve worked with hundreds of founders including scientists, artists, designers, and social entrepreneurs to help them design, grow and scale their businesses. Those who wanted high growth ventures have raised more than £10m collectively. Most of the others who just wanted to bootstrap and remain independent instead are also still going strong.
Experience
Co-Founder, ClimbWorks and Slingshot Venture Development
ClimbWorks is a new fractional management service which helps post-seed startups get ready for scaling. I founded Slingshot Venture Development in 2001 to help individuals and teams develop their innovation and entrepreneurial capabilities. My recent projects have included building Imperial College's Techcelerate programme for post doctoral researchers commercializing their technology and the MedTech SuperConnector.
Co-Founder FFWDLondon
We launched FFWDLondon.com, London’s first pre-accelerator in 2014. After 13 cohorts, we’ve supported over 260 teams, who’ve raised over £5m in pre-seed capital.
Early Stage Investment
Entrepreneur in Residence, NESTA Investments: Developed a support programme for NESTA Investment’s portfolio companies which replaced 400 mentors. Supported portfolio companies as interim CEO, board observer or by leading strategy reviews. Launched Scandinavia seed investment and acceleration operations for GorillaPark a up and coming dotcom era pan-European technology accelerator which up and went. Learnt a few lessons...
Scaling MedTech startups as CFO and European General Manager
My formative career experience was working with MedTech startups in Europe and California. I started in Finance doing the budgeting and projections for ACS, the most successful MedTech startup in Valley history, going from $0 to $100m in less than five years. I was the founding CFO of their first spin-off which we grew to $18m. I also set up European Operations for Gynecare and Concentric Medical both of which had successful exits.
Associate Lecturer, Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship, Central Saint Martins and Birkbeck
Developed and teach entrepreneurship for MBA, MA Innovation Management, and MA Arts and Cultural Enterprise programmes