John left school at 16 years of age to begin his career as an electronics apprentice with the Royal Aircraft Establishment, Bedford. He then subsequently joined Unilever Research as a research and development engineer. In his early twenties John moved into a sales and marketing career and spent 7 years working for US electronics manufactures including DataTech/Penril and Fairchild Test Systems, where he was European Sales Manager responsible for developing sales channels in Europe and Scandinavia.

In 1979 at the age of 30 John founded and was Managing Director of the UK subsidiary of Data Translation Inc. a US manufacturer of scientific and industrial microcomputer products. When LAN (Local Area Networking) technology first emerged in the early 1980's, John recognised the potential business opportunity and set up a specialist networking division, which subsequently became a market leader in its field. In late 1988 John founded and was Chairman and Managing Director of Logical Networks plc, a UK networking services business which was VC funded by 3i plc. Logical Networks grew rapidly at a CAGR of over 55% and was eventually acquired in 1997 by Datatec when sales reached £50m and staff numbered around 200. John subsequently became a main Board director of Datatec Limited and was later based in Brussels with responsibility for European acquisitions and business development. Datatec is a global network technology and services group (a Johannesburg Stock Exchange Top 40 public company) operating across five continents with annual worldwide sales for 1999 of US$1.1Bn. In June 2000 John left Datetec and returned to England to found Intermezzo Ventures Ltd, a new venture research and consultancy company.

In 1995 John received an EFER (European Foundation for Entrepreneurship Research) award as ‘One of Europe’s Top 500 Dynamic Entrepreneurs’ and in 1998 was nominated by 3i plc for the ‘FT/Cartier Venturer of the Year Award’. John is a visiting faculty at Henley Management College, and a DBA Research Associate undertaking doctoral research into the characteristics of entrepreneurial teams.

John’s current business interests include non exec Chairman and lead investor in Creating Careers Ltd a leading UK online learning company. He is also a member of the Institute of Directors (IOD) interview panel for Chartered Director Accreditation.