meet terry.
As well as his investment work, Terry also acts in an advisory capacity through business scale up mentoring, CEO consultancy and exit strategy for fast-growth brands looking for support in their forward momentum, alongside assisting businesses looking to exit in ensuring maximum acquisition value.
Entrepreneurial beginnings
Having been made redundant from his first ever job at the age of just 19 Terry committed to removing his reliance on a job, vowed to take control of life on his own terms and set up shop, opening the first ever Travelworld store. Through the innovative model that Travelworld created, the brand grew to 123 stores across the UK with a £130 million annual turnover. The market share that this challenger business was able to capture propelled Terry into the travel industry spotlight which led to an acquisition from Airtours, which was the UK's largest travel retailer at that time. Shortly after joining the board, as part of the merger, Terry was installed as the business’s CEO which saw him manage over 7,000 staff across 1,000 UK-wide stores. During this period Terry also became the youngest ever Chairman in the Football League when he bought Huddersfield Town. In his time as owner, the club enjoyed a drastic turnaround - on and off the pitch - with promotion to a higher division and the creation of a brand new, state of the art stadium.
Once internal brands were aligned and profitability increased at Going Places Terry was hungry for a new challenge and relocated to Spain where he turned his attention to disrupting the real estate market, working with struggling property organisations, helping them to make business model adjustments to turn them into highly profitable companies. Terry and his team spotted a gap in the market with providing 'show home' style, contemporary apartments that offered high net-worth buyers a turn-key solution for relocating, which led to the building of a number of bespoke developments and complexes.
After a spell in Spain Terry was offered the chance to relocate to Los Angeles to set up a new business so headed to the bright lights of LA - instantly falling in love with the place. But shortly after arriving Terry was Headhunted to return to the UK in order to become CEO of specialist travel brand Gold Medal Travel with a view to preparing the company for an acquisition. Terry oversaw the rebranding of Gold Medal and its sister company 'Airline Network' which became Netflights.com. During his tenure Terry changed the entire board, returned the business to substantial profitability and created a new high-end sub-brand in the form of Pure Luxury Travel. Having come into the role with a brief to prepare the business for sale at around a £50 million valuation, Terry ended up selling the company and all its brands to Thomas Cook for £86.5 Million.
The sale to Thomas Cook led to a very exciting opportunity as Terry's lifelong dream was to become the CEO of this 150 year old travel industry institution. This has been his goal and stated ambition since opening that first Travelworld store at just 19. But the tenure in this long sought-after role was bitter sweet as Terry quickly hit a stalemate with the shareholders of the business who seemingly refused to see the online revolution coming and the changes in consumer behaviour. After much soul searching Terry decided that the only way to move Thomas Cook in the right direction would be to own the business, so he left his role as CEO in order to launch a £400 million bid to buy the business. Sadly the offer was refused by the board and sadly the business later went into liquidation.
Profitable niches saw Terry head back to California where he founded Mapperarti, a bespoke map and exclusive marketing literature publishing company aimed at the luxury hotel market. This uniquely funded model had a great level of adoption globally and the success of the concept was the catalyst to Terry's next business DigiMapps which was an all-in-one travel technology solution. The customers of Mapperarti and Digimapps encouraged the creation of the next brand which was Nutshell WiFi, a powerful marketing automation tool and consumer content platform. Due to their success in the marketplace DigiMapps and Mapperarti we sold to the companies biggest competitors in 2018.
With the sale of the American brands, Terry returned to the Europe, splitting his time between London and Spain to work on a number of new investment opportunities which is when he became an early stage seed investor in Voisey. The premise of the app was to connect singers, songwriters, artists, and producers through collaborative songwriting and its popularity upon launch was huge, with over 2 million downloads in its first month - making it the most popular music app on the App Store. The consumer and media attention that the app generated resulted in most of the major social media platforms looking at acquiring the app, which culminated with Terry leading negotiations with multiple suitors until eventually agreeing terms for a sale with Snapchat. Voisey’s journey was only 18 months from an idea on a piece of paper to exit - one of Terry’s biggest achievements to date.
Although the Voisey deal had happened at breakneck speed, there was no chance of Terry sitting back and resting on his laurels - immediately after the sale to Snapchat he aggressively increased his investment position, entering into a number of new sectors. Some of Terry’s most recent investments include Centtrip, KlashX.com, ingame, Una Pizza and SurgEase.
The 'dream' realised
Headhunted For Acquisition
Selling to Snapchat
As well as working on his growing portfolio of investments, Terry is also an in-demand business mentor helping fast-growth brands to gain momentum, scale up and secure funding to accelerate their development. He also works directly with a small number of very high level CEOs and large organisation C-Suite executives to offer guidance, support and experienced-backed advice to household name brands.
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