This year’s conference at Gleneagles – the Leaders’ Summit – is about ambition, aspiration, reaching for the moon, thinking bigger than ever before. Each session focuses on a different angle; the first is Believe the Impossible, Mission Ambition, featuring Geoff Ellis of DF Concerts and young entrepreneurs Ryan O’Rorke and Assean Sheikh of startup Flavourly.
“The probability of success is difficult to estimate; but if we never search the chance of success is zero”
A quote from Giuseppe Cocconi and Philip Morrison’s paper ‘Searching for Interstellar Communications’ that was published in September 1959, one of the first formal rational arguments supporting the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence
Geoff Ellis started his career as a permanent Entertainments Manager at Middlesex Polytechnic in London – the highlight being booking The Stone Roses for one of their first concerts in the Capital. He then moved to the world famous Marquee Club before heading up to Glasgow in 1992 to join DF Concerts as promoter of the company’s legendary venue King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. As the company rose to become one of the UK’s leading music promotion and event management companies, partially due to the creation of the T in the Park festival, Geoff’s progression in turn led to his appointment as Chief Executive in 2001.
As CEO of DF Concerts and Events, Geoff is dedicated to bringing the very best live music and events to Scotland. He spends a lot of time on T in the Park, making it one of the largest and most innovative festivals in the world with huge International recognition.
Geoff heads up a multi skilled team that is as comfortable promoting Take That, One Direction, The Killer, Kings of Leon, Eminem, AC/DC, The Eagles, Rihanna, Radiohead and Coldplay and the best emerging talent around as well as event managing Glasgow on Ice, BBC @ The Quay, The Papal Visit to Bellahouston Park and Radiance – Glasgow’s Festival of Light.
Geoff is also an executive committee member of the UK Concert Promoters Association and a member of the fundraising committee for Nordoff Robbins Music Therapy in Scotland.
As seen on Dragons Den and with more than 600,000 products shipped in just over two years, Flavourly’s mission is to help consumers discover the best gourmet food, snacks & craft beer. Flavourly uses data to match consumers to delicious, hard to find products via monthly subscription boxes. Once consumers discover their new favourite products, the Flavourly marketplace is the most effortless and affordable place on the web to re-order them.
Assean Sheikh is a Babson-trained, data-driven entrepreneur and the CEO of Flavourly – the UK’s fastest growing personalised gourmet food, snack & craft beer discovery service.
Joining Flavourly in 2014, after completing the Saltire Fellowship, Assean has grown the business from a single founder to a team of 10, increased year on year monthly sales by over 300% and raised £400,000 investment via CrowdCube.
He is also active in the Entrepreneurial community, being alumni of Entrepreneurial Spark, PSYBT, Power of Youth, Scottish Institute for Enterprise and a mentor at Project Scotland.
Prior to Flavourly, Assean founded and piloted Direct Mechanics, an alternative approach to car servicing in the UK and has a background in financial services, working for Morgan Stanley. In his spare time he is a huge motorsports fan and likes to travel.
Ryan O’Rorke is an multi-award winning internet entrepreneur born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland.
After dropping out of university at 24 and with a few hundred pounds in his pocket he went on to start Flavourly from his grandmother’s car garage; it is now the largest gourmet food, snack and craft beer discovery service in the UK and is on track to hit £1m sales in 2015.
In 2014, he set the record for the fastest funded crowdfunded business in the UK at the time, being fully funded on the Angels Den network in just 22 hours.
He appeared on the BBC TV show ‘Dragons Den’ in early 2015 where he received 4/5 offers and was branded ‘The Dragon Slayer’ as shortly after the show aired he went on to raise £400,000 through a live crowd fund, which was more than five times the amount offered from the dragons.
When Ryan is not living and breathing Flavourly or in the gym, he loves to sample new craft beers and help aspiring entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneurial Scotland 