I started off as a purchase ledger clerk in a commercial radio group and moved up through the management accounting career path. I worked in big media agencies in London where I qualified in 2005. I then took on more senior roles through independent advertising and digital agencies, becoming a finance director and ultimately chief operating officer of a small advertising group.
I set up Thrive in 2012. I had seen how accountancy firms in Australia and New Zealand were serving their clients and the new cloud accounting tools that were gaining traction. I realised I could provide a different experience for small business owners – taking that concept of real-time financial information and equipping them with the business intelligence that until that point had been the preserve of much bigger companies.
As we grew, we decided that targeting a niche was the right direction to take the business. You gain a deep understanding of a niche and really serve those businesses in the broadest way. Our niche is technology businesses, and our client base is mostly formed from London’s startup and scale-up community.
I realised I could use cloud-based tools to equip SMEs with the business intelligence that until then had been the preserve of much bigger companies
Further information
Read about ACCA’s commitment to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals
People care about who they do business with, who they buy from and who they work for. Our mission is to help people we may never meet to thrive – it is an unusual purpose, but it is what drives us.
If we’re to achieve the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals by 2030, businesses have a critical role to play. Individual action alone won’t do it, nor can we leave it to governments. As accountants, we’re perfectly placed to take this conversation to our clients, show them how it works and collectively bring purposefulness into the mainstream. We’ve just applied for a B Corp certification and are awaiting assessment for that.
When we meet an internal objective of getting accounts filed within three months of a year-end, we sponsor an irrigation project in Africa for a month. So far, we’ve accumulated around 125,000 of these micro-giving impacts. That could be anything, like providing a single day of water to someone in Ethiopia, or access to a micro-loan for an entrepreneur in Malawi to start their own business. Suddenly, being an accountant and performing routine tasks is really cool!
