Welcome to the PUB
Friendly, free advice for start-up founders and small business owners in need of an independent sounding board
What's the PUB?
The Pop Up Board, a place where start-ups and small businesses can come to talk through challenges they are facing.
Why?
An advisory board can be invaluable but for many reasons, start-ups and small business often don’t have one. Finding the right people can be time consuming, and if you set one up too early you could end up with the wrong people or the wrong mix of people.
There are times though where being able to discuss your business’ challenges with a highly experienced group of senior business people can give you a priceless opportunity to gain valuable insight, knowledge, and advice without having to learn the hard way, set aside time for outside training, or risk making costly mistakes that could have been avoided if the team had more relevant experience. That’s where the PUB comes in.
We’ll offer you up to three one-hour advisory sessions without requiring any commitment, so you can get a feel for an advisory board without the effort and cost of setting one up and running it. After working with you us, you’ll hopefully feel more confident about what to do next and also clearer about what you might need from your own advisory board when you do set one up.
How it works
First off, the PUB is for you if:
- You're a start-up or small business owner; or
- You're someone with a well-developed start-up idea; and
- You're in the Woking area
If you fit the bill and you'd like to work with us, you then get it touch to tell us a bit about your business or idea, and what specifically you'd like us to help with. If we think we have something to offer you, we'll ask you for more information. The session itself then runs along the following lines:
- You deliver a brief pitch
- You describe your problem and what you've tried or thought about so far to address it
- We'll ask some clarifying questions to make sure we've understood
- We'll give you some feedback on what we've heard
- We'll explore with you some different approaches to the problem
- You decide what to next
- You leave, feeling more confident about your next steps
What does it cost?
The first session is free. If you’d like one or two more, we will ask for a small contribution for a local charity.
Please note
We're doing this as volunteers on a 'best endeavours' basis. Members of the PUB cannot be held liable for any losses as a result of any decisions a business might take following a PUB session - your decisions are your own
Who we are
We're a group of Woking-based RSA Fellows and friends who have been exploring ways to contribute to our local community. Between us, we have over 200 years of professional experience in a variety of sectors.
Niraj Saraf, Founder
Niraj is an innovation leader with over 30 years’ experience of strategy and policy development, and programme management across public, private, and voluntary sector organisations in the UK and internationally. He is a Director at sustainability research and advisory firm, Verdantix, which he joined after a stint at a tech start-up after 7 years at Innovate UK. Niraj started his career in the Fast Stream of the UK Civil Service and has since also worked in banking and in consulting. He has always enjoyed the thrills of entrepreneurship: he started his first business venture at the age of 13; helped launch another venture in 2005; and is an experienced start-up mentor. His qualifications include an MBA from Imperial Business School, and an MSc in Sustainability and Responsibility from Ashridge Business School.
Clare Wildfire
Clare graduated with a mathematics degree and, following a brief stint in computer graphics at The Independent newspaper, she joined a small building services engineering firm in 1989 and has stayed with the profession ever since. She is now Global Practice Leader for Cities with a global engineering, management and development consultancy. She leads regeneration, low carbon and sustainable innovation projects. From her 30 years’ experience in the sector, Clare combines her practical understanding of construction and development drivers and processes at macro and micro levels with policy engagement, bringing insight into the technical, political, financial and behavioural aspects of sustainable development and low carbon living.
Her roles have included responsibilities in business development and work winning, project and contractual management, team leadership including resource and personnel issues.
Clare is also chair of her company’s global Equality, Diversity and Inclusion initiative.
John Machin
A plain-speaking Yorkshireman, from Sheffield, with lifelong fascination about what makes individuals and organisations successful. John studied Management Science at Warwick University joining Thomson McLintock in London in 1979. He enjoyed a fascinating and varied professional services career working with and advising clients ranging from owner managed to large multinationals over 5 decades with KPMG, 25 years as partner. A seasoned Chartered Accountant and Certified Information Systems Auditor with a track record of building successful professional services and meaningful relationships in order to help improve the business operations of organisations. Working with the “C Suite” continuous improvement of systems and controls and implementation of innovative solutions, including Information Technology and Strategic Sourcing, were key aspects of his client work. Clients included BP, Barclays, Client Suisse, HSBC and The Bank of England. John is currently NED for CSH Surrey, an IFA Client Service Board member and FD for Puttenham Golf Club
Martin Thomas
Martin is an ex-Unilever executive and a co-founder of Thomas & McElroy LLC. At Unilever, he headed the company’s global strategic planning activities and then had responsibility for several mergers, acquisitions, disposals and international ventures in various countries. His work was international, mainly at subsidiary executive board level, conducted in four languages and living consecutively on four continents.
Since 1999 he has been focusing on change management as call4change and has taken on consulting, directorships and operational assignments, mainly in UK organizations.
His collaboration with Mark McElroy resulted in the MultiCapital Scorecard book; published by Chelsea Green in 2016. It sets out principles for measuring and managing sustainability performance. It is unique in also providing an implementation methodology. An FCG and FCMA, he holds Master’s degrees in finance and change management.
Amanda Nobbs, OBE
Amanda offers Chair, NED and Chief Executive experience across the public, private and charitable sectors. A common thread throughout all her roles has been an ability to bring people together to make ambitious change possible. She has a keen sense of the vision, tenacity, power to connect and courage needed for a business to succeed. She is motivated by making a difference and enjoys mentoring and sharing leadership experience as a St George’s Leadership Fellow. Amanda is currently a Local Government Boundary Commissioner for England, determining electoral arrangements for Councils, and is Chair of the Marine Conservation Society. Her career has been enriched by variety from managing a small business to overseeing major infrastructure programmes and projects, running media campaigns, achieving legislative change, and serving in advisory roles for government. Amanda has an MA from Cambridge, an MSc from UCL and was awarded an OBE in 2017 for services to Flood Risk Management and Environmental Protection.
David Brown
David is Deputy Head of a Preparatory School in Woking, an Independent Schools Inspector and Teacher Training provider. Before this, David provided IT support within a school. David holds a Masters Degree in Educational Leadership and is an advocate of skilful staff empowerment and higher order thinking.
Michael Winslow
Michael is a successful Senior Executive with experience at board level in both Executive & Non Executive positions. Michael has broad international experience set against a record of achievement in a wide range of industry sectors. Michael's skills & expertise lie in negotiation, influencing & persuasion, as well as delivering significant success in developing and managing strategic partnerships and alliances, building global organisations' behaviours and managing across cultures. He holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Executive Business Coaching and currently works with a number of businesses to help them define their business strategies and value propositions. He has been Chairman at Bidwedge.com since 2018 and has seen the business concept develop from an initial ‘coffee shop’ conversation to where it is now.
Our Principles
Confidentiality: All information is treated with the strictest confidence
Transparency: Any conflicts of interest are declared at the start of every pitch and the PUB members in question will, if requested, absent themselves from the client session
Objectivity: We will focus on the issues presented to us without making any judgements about you
Community-focused: We are here to support businesses in Woking, and especially businesses seeking to make Woking a better place
Ethical: We will not support businesses whose products or services needlessly damage the environment or cause social division, unless those businesses are seeking support on how to become more sustainable
Honesty: If we do not between us have the experience or knowledge to advise, we will say so.
Fun: We aim to make our sessions enjoyable so that you leave feeling positive about your business and with some clear ideas about how to take it forward.
CONTACT US
If you'd like to work with us the we’d love to hear from you. Send us a message using the form below we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.
