01
STEP Conference
Spoke on the AI stage about the AI innovation going on in the world.
[ Dubai ]
Cameron
Business is the thing I have always been most passionate about. The rawness of it, and the courage it takes to build one. I have been inspired by founders' journeys for as long as I can remember.
FifthGeneration
Anglesey, North Wales
Beautiful, isolated, and the kind of place people do not leave.
I was born and raised there speaking Welsh, in a family with five generations of business owners behind it. I started working in the family business every summer from the age of eight, and from a young age I was reading the biographies of really successful business owners. That is when I fell in love with business, and with the idea of building one.
I had not seen much of the world, and travelling, which I started young, broadened my horizons and my understanding of it. Then Cardiff University for accounting and finance, a master's in finance, and the chartered accountancy after that. Three qualifications, because I wanted to understand as much about business as I possibly could.
I have sat in the rooms where a business is going under. It opened my eyes to what breaks a company at scale, and so to what allows one to succeed.
Cameron, 30 seconds
Restructuring and distressed M&A
EY, Manchester
The restructuring team, and some of the most competent people I have ever met.
Alvarez and Marsal
The largest boutique restructuring firm in the world, the firm that ran the Lehman Brothers insolvency. My dream role.
British Steel
The country's second largest steelmaker, rescued and sold to Jingye against $1.2 billion in investment commitments.
Project Birch
A leading role advising the government through COVID on which of the country's largest companies it should stand behind. A multi-billion dollar project in its entirety.
TheRegion
Dubai, at seventeen
One
I first came here on my own, an avid traveller with no plan beyond seeing it, and I fell in love with the place.
Two
The infrastructure, the etiquette, the safety, and the licence to look around and dream. I saw the Burj Khalifa for the first time and it amazed me.
Three
I moved, because I believed Dubai was one of the most exciting markets on the planet. I still do. Forty-five countries, and the one I chose.
Dubai, at seventeen
The Burj Khalifa
At twenty-five, for good
Corporate, or building
Corporate life gave me every tool and none of the reasons.
The shift is real. More people want to build than at any time I can remember, and I understand it completely, because I was one of them, inside a firm that had taught me everything except why. The courage it takes is not the problem. The tools and the skills are, and putting those in people's hands is what I care about.
So I resigned and went all in on YP Club. Every signal was there. Then the war came close enough to end it, and we rebuilt.
Community
Community is the thing that separates the businesses that make it from the ones that do not.
YP Club
Why YP Club
I founded YP Club in 2023 because the standard for communities is so low, and the word founder has gone unclaimed for sixty years.
There is so much work to be done: to support people in scaling their business, and to put proper infrastructure under them. Not the events, not the app. The room: a table of peers who have made payroll through a bad quarter, in a city made by its hosts. Jim Rohn is credited with saying you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Most founders never choose the five.
At its peak, eight hundred and fifty members across three cities.
Community
What I argue
One
Everybody longs to belong. It is a basic human need, and belonging comes from a shared belief system.
Two
Your circle is your ceiling, and building one is hard.
Three
Harder still is finding the people who will make you better, and challenge you.
Where I have stood
02
Entrepreneur magazine
Announcing the launch of PioneerOS, the platform we built ourselves.
[ In print ]
03
Youssef Salem
CFO of ADNOC Drilling. A fireside on the financial landscape, raising capital, and his history with Swvl, later listed on the NASDAQ.
[ Fireside ]
04
Lawrence Okolie
A fireside with the world champion boxer on the mindset of the athlete, and how it relates to business.
[ Fireside ]
05
Kushal Shah
Founder of Dubai Angel Investors, $12 million allocated. Managing partner of a $180 million ventures arm. Now building his own business, having seen the entire landscape.
[ Fireside ]
PioneerCapital
Capital
I built Pioneer Capital for this. We invest in pioneers shaping the future.
We back the companies playing a critical role in founder infrastructure and the universe of business. I also sit on boards as an advisor. The knowledge and the network from every room above, put to work on the other side of the table.
