Tony started his career as a highly cited researcher in photonics and inertial confinement fusion at Oxford and Osaka Universities. He then joined PA Consulting before founding three start-ups that went on to exit for a combined $1.5Bn
Tony has recently retired after ten years as Chief Executive of Cambridge Enterprise, the research commercialisation office of the University of Cambridge. Under his leadership academic consultancy grew 90%, spin-out numbers 250% and spin-out investment 750% including two “unicorn” exits in the last year. He also established the £500m Cambridge Innovation Capital follow-on investment fund and a seed investment fund for high net worth friends and alumni of the University. More recently he was central to the creation of TenU - a partnership of ten world leading tech transfer offices in the US, UK and EU to develop and share best practice and provide policy advice to UK and US Governments.
Tony started his career as a highly cited researcher in photonics and inertial confinement fusion at Oxford and Osaka Universities. He then joined PA Consulting before founding three start-ups that went on to exit for a combined $1.5Bn. After exiting his third start-up Tony joined Southampton University where he grew their Research & Innovation Services with five IPOs from 11 spin-outs. He established with IP Group their university investment model that has now been replicated at 31 universities worldwide. He also created SETsquared, a now six university collaboration to incubate and accelerate local spinout and start-up tech companies, that has now supported over 5,000 companies who have raised over £2.7Bn and created 20,000 jobs. SETsquared has been repeatedly ranked as the #1 university business incubator globally.
In his “retirement” Tony Chairs the Spin-outs Denmark International Advisory Board, is on the Advisory and Investment Committees of the UK Government Office for Technology Transfer and is a Visiting Fellow with Cambridge’s University Commercialisation and Innovation Policy Evidence Unit. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and a Member of the Institute of Directors.