A blunt critique of organisations that claim to be resilient but have never stress-tested their systems, rehearsed recovery under pressure, or practised failure in any meaningful way. The article challenges boardroom bravado and highlights the psychological and operational consequences of untested confidence, arguing that true resilience is earned through discomfort, not declared in policy.
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Two senior leaders, Sir Charlie Mayfield, former John Lewis chairman, and Sir Dan Moynihan, CEO of the Harris Federation, joined BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme on 1 May 2025 to discuss the impact of recent cyber attacks on Marks & Spencer, the Co-op, and UK schools. Their stories offer rare insight into how institutions respond to major breaches and what it really takes to recover.
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As Chair of the West Midlands Cyber Working Group, I’ve helped lead DSIT’s Cyber Local steering group for the region over the past two years. Working alongside regional experts, I’ve supported the selection of projects that strengthen cyber resilience on the ground, including Aston University’s powerful work on cyber violence against women and girls. This experience has reinforced just how critical locally informed funding is to building practical, inclusive, and impactful cyber capability.
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This virtual book is a guide to the entrepreneurial journey, drawn from real-world experiences in cyber startups. It distils insights from my time on the NCSC for Startups accelerator (cohort 13, 2023), the DSIT Cyber Runway Scale programme (2024/2025), and my mentoring on DSIT’s Cyber ASAP programme. It’s a collection of lessons, reflections, and hard-earned knowledge from the founders, investors, and industry leaders I’ve met along the way. Thanks to Marcel Duchamp you can think of it as a “ready made”, a curated work built from my blog articles, assembled to help you navigate the path from startup to scale, and beyond.
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The Ides of March is a fitting time to reflect on betrayal, resilience, and the realities of UK cybersecurity. In the past two weeks, I’ve balanced DSIT’s Cyber Local funding process, chaired the West Midlands Cyber Working Group (WM CWG), led two funding bids, scaled one startup in a brutal funding climate, and booted up a second from scratch. Along the way, I’ve won the Pitch Battle at Cyber Runway Live, launched the UK’s first dedicated universal cyber risk score and comparison site, and tackled everything from weaponised AI threats to Kafka-powered scalability, all while navigating the messy, unpredictable, and often painful journey of building something that lasts.
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For any startup founder, the journey from idea to execution is filled with challenges. However, the biggest transformation isn’t just in scaling a business, it’s in evolving from a founder into a CEO.
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The lifelong relationship between neurologist Oliver Sacks and psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold bridged the fields of neurology and psychoanalysis, blending Sacks’ focus on neurological disorders with Shengold’s exploration of trauma. Their five-decade-long therapeutic bond profoundly shaped Sacks’ work, emphasizing the interplay between identity, resilience, and human experience, and illustrating the value of interdisciplinary collaboration in understanding the mind.
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This article, the culmination of my reflections on the myth of the West, deconstructs the utopian dream of the Western frontier, exploring its evolution from Manifest Destiny to Silicon Valley. Through historical analysis, literary critiques, and a look at Hollywood’s portrayal of the West, it examines how the promise of freedom and opportunity often fell short, revealing the complexities of the Western ideal. For me, this myth resonates deeply, intertwined with personal influences like Celtic romanticism, family legacies, and cross-cultural inspirations from Kurosawa.
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