James is a Director at The Up Group.

He joined Up in June 2016 following 15 years as a Co-Founder and senior Commercial operator within a number of scaled and exited VC- and PE-backed B2B companies, and after Up’s Founder & CEO Clare uttered the fateful words ‘have you considered a career in search?’! 

The initial phases of his career working in multi-national ad agencies such as J. Walter-Thompson, Publicis and RKCR provided James with his foundational experience, learning and passion for a wide range of brands and sectors, which led him into the next phase of his career as an entrepreneur and operator within high growth digital start-ups and scale-ups, both in Europe and USA.

In 2000, James left the corporate but highly creative advertising world to become Co-Founder and Chief Revenue Officer for Espotting, which in five years became Europe’s largest pay-per-click company. As part of this journey, James helped raise over $20m in seed to Series C funding, before eventually selling the business to a US-based competitor in 2005 for c.$200m.

Since then, James has either led or been part of the management team for a variety of both early stage and also more mature, PE-backed businesses, all of whom were going through rapid growth – in roles ranging from CEO and CCO, to Director of Business Development and SVP Client Development – in London and New York.

Over the past 15 years, James has also been an active advisor and seed investor for early stage B2B tech companies in Europe, and still holds active interests in a portfolio of over 15 investments; he has also been a mentor for the Seedcamp and TechStars programmes. 

James has received a number of awards in his career, including ‘Faces To Watch’ from Campaign Magazine, and also being listed in The Sunday Times’ ‘Top 40 Under 40’ in the UK Media & Advertising industry.

James was educated at Harrow School and has a BA Hons in Media, Advertising & Communications from Bristol.