Hugh is an entrepreneur with 30 years success leading ventures and building innovation communities around startups and corporations. He is currently CEO at JFDI.Asia. Since 2012 Hugh has co-founded, mentored or invested in more than 70 startup companies, achieving 48% IRR.
Hugh's Physics degree was sponsored by GEC-Marconi Research, where he worked on digital radar, radio propagation and home automation. This technical background gave him the opportunity to train as a TV producer-director with the BBC's Tomorrow's World, a live primetime science show watched by up to 8 million viewers each week.
Hugh left the BBC to found Narrateo, an independent TV production company. It received a British Academy Award nomination making over 150 documentaries for Discovery Channel and National Geographic.
Building on his experience managing creative people and IP, in 2001, Hugh co-founded Pembridge Partners. This London-based investment and advisory firm raised over USD50m working with 300+ technology media and marketing firms. Hugh captured the insights he gained in his first book Brainfruit, co-authored with Mark Chong, and published by McGraw-Hill.
In 2009 Hugh and his wife chose to raise their son in Singapore, where Hugh co-founded JFDI.Asia. As the first business accelerator in SE Asia, JFDI proved pivotal in kick-starting Singapore's entrepreneurial ecosystem, deploying approximately USD3m into a portfolio of 70 international startups. JFDI has also supported thousands of start-up founders through its outreach programs. The second book that Hugh co-edited, Facing Down Failure, captures eight Singapore startup stories.
Outside work, Hugh co-founded UAS, a UK education charity, with Simon Singh MBE. UAS has enabled hundreds of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) undergraduates to explore a career in teaching and it now forms part of more than 25% of UK STEM undergraduate courses.
Born a UK citizen, Hugh is now a Permanent Resident of Singapore.
