David Ashford

David's 20 year career started in marketing & product development and he then joined advertising agency group Publicis as a Business Analyst and progressed to UK Head of Information Systems. In 1997 David co-founded an e-business consulting firm which quickly achieved over $10m annual revenues before being acquired by a French public company within 4 years. After co-founding 10 start-ups & making some private investments, most notably in Net-a-Porter which was acquired by Richemont for over $500m in April 2010, David worked as an M&A scout for a US entrepreneur and for a private equity firm as a turnaround consultant with a focus on e-business. While working as an investment consultant looking after technology portfolio companies, the opportunity arose to get involved in the leading UK iPhone app development agency Future Workshops. David then moved to Abu Dhabi to plan and launch AppsArabia. David graduated with honours in Pure Maths and has an MBA from Henley Management College.