Andrew Charlie Ford, Founder and CEO 

CustomerGig UK

andrew@customergig.com

https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewforduk/           https://twitter.com/andrewfordUK

Andrew founded CustomerGig to offer business strategy and marketing services for businesses to achieve rapid and sustained growth across various vertical sectors and country markets.  

Andrew is an experienced c-level global business leader (CMO, CPO, interim Chair, board, NED), based near London, UK, with more than 25 years of experience growing revenue and EBITDA in large, scale-up private-equity, and start-up to scale-up SaaS and tech businesses, across Europe, USA, Americas, Asia, MiddleEast & Africa. 

He has worked with Private Equity and Venture Capital investors in order to offer his fractional / interim experience, to build strong go-to-market plans and financial forecasts, to optimise revenue growth and EBITDA for the portfolio businesses during their hold period.

CustomerGig works with Founders / CEOs / Chairperson, other board members / business leaders and cross-functional teams, and their PE / VC investors, to drive key strategy, financial modelling, creativity, digital, data modelling, people / culture, and operations strength with a focus on customer engagement, experience, long-term preference, loyalty and advocacy, for scale-up monetisation across vertical sectors & country markets, to grow revenue & EBITDA.

Clients & Experience:

Veremark HRTech SaaS (2021 to 2022) - CMO fractional interim & scale-up growth adviser. Hired by Daniel Callaghan, CEO, to build the global growth plan, brand strategy, integrated vertical sector campaigns for core markets (Australia, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore & UK), to launch & build the USA market, and grow other adjacent country markets around the world, covering key vertical sectors: FinTech / FinServ / financially regulated; Professional Services; Management Consulting; HR Staffing & Recruiting; IT / Tech / Software; & Business Process Outsourcing (BPO). 

Built the performance marketing team = business development, SEO web optimisation and content, web channel technical & backlink partners, SEM LinkedIn & Google Ads, Biz-Dev email sequences & calls, HubSpot, Google Analytics, video, blog & white-paper content, and mentored and collaborated with Sales, Customer Success / Account Management, and Product Development teams.  

Planned and launched the competitive-differentiator Verepass Career Passport, with key USA-based partner, & delivered video and written content. 

Helped to secure $2.8M usd seed round raised September 2021, and $8.5M usd series-A funding (including Stage 2 Capital, Triple Point, Samaipata ) in June 2022. Press Announcement.

Achieved annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth from £1.4million (FY2021) to £4.0million pounds sterling (FY2022).

"Andrew is a great team member. He contributes wherever he can and tries to spread the company values and message in every interaction. He joined Veremark at an early stage and acted as both a strong execution oriented executive and mentor to others in the team achieving results that ensured the company was able to raise multiple rounds of investment. He also readily opens up his network of contacts to help the company achieve its goals and would happily recommend to any company looking to enhance their marketing efforts."  Daniel Callaghan, CEO, Veremark

Wejo connected-vehicle analytics, cloud & SaaS (2021 to 2022) - Hired by Richard Barlow, Serial Entrepreneur, Founder & CEO, to provide leadership as CMO fractional interim. 

Collaborated with the GMs, Marketing, Product, Partnerships, Data Science & Sales teams on new emerging sector strategy & plans for 2022. 

Launched Wejo Neural Edge technology & CES, Las Vegas, January 2022. Built the plans for PR, media & Analyst relations, collaborating with investor relations, the CTO, SVP Product & Head of Strategy, with resourcing, communications, and engagement. 

Partnered with General Motors, Honda, Mercedes, and Renault motor manufacturer OEM teams, for co-branded and dual-spokesperson communications and announcements.

Coached the demand-generation team for 2022 integrated campaigns, and HubSpot / Salesforce integration.  Created the Wejo brand strategy and story, for the next phase of growth in USA, European & Asia markets. 

Successfully advised on investor engagement for $330 million usd (including $230M from Virtuoso Acquisition Corp) NASDAQ SPAC listing, November 2021. Press Announcement.

"You (Andrew) have been excellent in your role and have been a benefit to me and my team." Tahmin Clarke, SVP IR, Finance, Legal & Compliance, Wejo

Cyance MarTech SaaS (2018 to 2021) - CMO, board membership, interim Chair. Introduced to the board by Mike Housley, Chairman, Cyance.

Developed integrated ABM & demand-generation campaigns targeting key segments, using AdTech programmatic, press relations, events, and Analyst Relations. 

Resulted in >400% growth in SaaS MRR to £150k pounds sterling, with 60+ customers across EMEA, USA & Asia markets. 

Led fourth seed £1million sterling funding round, Q1 2021, working with major investors Blackfinch, Peter Brookes & Nexus Investments.  

"Andrew has provided high quality advice and Go To Market planning & direction during the transformation of Cyance from a data focused agency into a full fledged SaaS business. A seasoned professional with 'hands on' CMO level client side experience. A highly valued advisor to our board as we continue to scale and accelerate the growth of the business. Andrew's depth of international experience is also a big asset."  Mike Housley, Chairman, Cyance

PSYT (Psychological Technologies) mental health & wellbeing App (2019) - CMO fractional, helping Nicholas Begley,  Co-Founder & CEO, and team to grow mental health and wellbeing app subscriptions and launches.

Worked with key Content providers (including Chloe Brotheridge) to secure their inclusion on the app and in media activities, Social Media plan design and delivery, Digital content and marketing deployed on Google. 

Achieved successful Anxiety App launch.

Optunli HRTech SaaS (2018) -  CMO interim, to help build this early stage HRTech business.

Introduced by Clare Graham, and recruited by and worked closely with the founders, Delia Zanatta & Teresa Fox to shape product marketing plans, collaborate with sales and CTO to engage new prospective customers to understand their people-strategy transformation needs and future opportunities for Optunli.

Built the go-to-market strategy and B2B / B2C product marketing plan. 

Achieved and secured the first professional services sector customers for this B2B workforce / talent optimisation & B2C career-management start-up. 

"You’ve (Andrew) been instrumental in helping us to build our marketing strategy and accelerate our marketing activities in some key areas over the past few months. Our priority ....... needs to be on building on the solid marketing base you have helped us to build...." Delia Zanatta, Founder & CEO, Optunli 

Aventus Blockchain & SaaS (2017 to 2018) - CMO & Board Advisor. Recruited by Alan Vey, CEO, following the successful 2017 $20million AVT token sale, with principle investor Global Advisors Bitcoin Investment Fund.

Developed the marketing strategy, hire a new team, in order to build UK and US awareness, education, partnerships, and lead-generation, and prepare for wider rollout to other European, ME, APAC and LATAM markets, and engage with the AVT crypto token investor community. Press Release.

Grew awareness and acted as the spokesperson for ‘blockchain live event ticketing’ across live music, sport and theatre sectors, influencing change in the the top 10 live event businesses worldwide. Launched in US market, with key partner-marketing with US-based ICO start-ups – Blocside and KindHeaven, and collaboration with LA-based VC investor & incubator Science Inc for wider North American market growth.

Red Box Financial Services compliance & Call-Centre performance SaaS (2016 to 2017) -  CMO, CPO & board. 

Introduced new customer-focused product development planning (50% efficiency gain) and marketing strategy to target FinTech & Financial Services, Call Centres across vertical sectors, and Emergency Services 'Blue Light' organisations, for EMEA, USA & Asia markets. 

Developed strong business partnerships with Bloomberg and Booking.com, and developed FinTech / Financial Services customer relationships across USA, UK, Hong Kong and Singapore markets.

Achieved the growth of scale-up business revenues £12M to £19M pounds sterling, and qualified sales pipeline increased by 40%.  

Private Equity-backed, by Living Bridge .

Precisely / PB Software (2014 to 2016) - Vice President Marketing & Communications and global leadership team.

Led enterprise customer data management, location intelligence, customer engagement, logistics & ecommerce SaaS.

Transformed B2B marketing with new inbound marketing strategy and campaign delivery to target Financial Services across different country markets. Introduced behaviour-intent data analytics to drive rich targeted and integrated inbound campaigns. 

Achieved 200% increase in identified opportunities, and $1.5billion usd annual revenues.

"I've worked alongside Andrew for 18 months. In that time he has introduced method and strategy into the marketing and communications function, and as a direct consequence there is much better alignment and cooperation with the sales and account management teams. Andrew is focused and clear-headed, and inspires his team to accomplish great things."  Rob Dallison, Vice President, Precisely software

Norton by Symantec SaaS & Cloud Security (2009 to 2013) -  Director of Marketing | Transformed the leadership team and culture, resulting in award-winning campaigns, and a 9% increase in online Smartphone and Tablet installations. 

Grew and transitioned the international B2B2C & B2C direct ecommerce business to a SaaS multi-device (Apple, Android and Microsoft) & cloud subscription model, and across indirect retail, telecoms, and tech OEM indirect channels.. 

Achieved $650m (USD) annual revenues across direct and indirect channels.

"Andrew was a member of our Norton Voice of the Customer Council and was responsible for ensuring we communicate with our customers to ensure they know throughout their lifecycle what value the company is adding. Andrew is collaborative, professional and extremely customer focused and we worked together on numerous projects to show the value of the customer relationship."  Robyn Weeda, Director Support and Customer Experience, Norton by Symantec

Dell enterprise (2006 to 2009) - Head of Marketing. Built and led a new team, and built the marketing strategy, comprising new acquisition & retention campaign managers, product marketing managers, and direct ecommerce channel managers. 

Transformed the revenue number mix to 50% solutions / professional services / software versus hardware sales. 

Achieved forecasted $2.8bn (USD) annual revenue.

"I had the pleasure to work with Andrew in his capacity as Marketing Manager Corporate Accounts UK, and later as European Marketing Manager Corporate Accounts Europe. Andrew had a good knowledge of global and local market dynamics, the competitive landscape and more specifically product and service portfolios. He worked well with the sales organisation, listening and participating well within senior management teams."  Katherine Bennett, General Manager, Dell Mid-Market business unit