James Layfield
Strategist and entrepreneur, based in Miami. For thirty years I have spotted shifts in how people live, work and decide, then built the thing that serves them: from Virgin Student and Central Working to Rise with Barclays, Clearfind and, now, Samplify.
Act I: From an egg round to Virgin's youngest MD.
I grew up in the north of England and ran my first business as a boy, selling eggs door to door. Advertising in London taught me what makes people choose one thing over another. Then students started living their social lives online, and I went to work where they were.
The change I saw: a generation was moving its life online.
- The start. JayLay Eggs. My first business, as a boy: eggs, door to door. Source: YHP, 2012
- Late 1990s. Advertising. Started on Wonderbra. Then Absolut, PlayStation and Robbie Williams' first EMI album. Source: YHP, 2012
- 2000. Virgin Student. Headhunted by Virgin as a marketing director, on its student network, just as students were taking their social lives online. Source: YHP, 2012
- Age 29. Virgin's youngest MD. Managing Director of Virgin Student at 29, the youngest MD of a Virgin business.
Like doing an MBA with Branson as your mentor.
Source: BOE Magazine, 2013
Act II: Work left the office. I built where it went.
Laptops and phones meant people could work from anywhere, and they needed somewhere good to do it. I built those places: first for travellers, then for the people building London's next companies.
The change I saw: work stopped belonging to a building.
- 2006. Escape Airports. An executive lounge at JFK that any traveller could walk into, whatever their airline. The company still runs today as No1 Lounges. Source: Companies House
- 2011. Central Working. A members' club where people building businesses could work, meet and find each other.
We engineer business serendipity.
Source: Business Matters, 2017 - 2012. Google Campus London. One of four partners chosen to open Google Campus in Shoreditch, alongside Seedcamp, Tech Hub and Springboard. Source: Dezeen, 2012
- 2014 to 2017. Beyond Bloomsbury. Whitechapel with Barclays, Techstars and Microsoft Ventures. Manchester. Then Trinity College chose us to run its new centre in Cambridge. Source: Cambridge Network, 2016
Act III: The banks wanted in. I built the door.
Fintech startups were rebuilding banking, and the big banks needed a way to work with them. I built places where the two could meet, then carried London's case abroad.
The change I saw: the next bank would be built by startups.
- Barclays. Rise. As I tell it, Barclays asked the Mayor who could build its own Google Campus. His answer: meet James. That became Rise. Source: Mixergy, 2021
- Nov 2015. Tech Ambassador for London. Named a London Tech Ambassador and joined the Mayor's trade mission to Tel Aviv with sixteen UK tech firms. Source: UKTN, 2015
- 2017. To New York. Moved to New York to work from inside Rise and watch how companies really run. The next idea came from there. Source: Mixergy, 2021
Act IV: Same instinct, pointed at decisions.
Every team was buying its own apps, and nobody could see the whole picture. So I moved from buildings to software, and to the question most companies get wrong: what should we buy?
The change I saw: software spend had outgrown anyone's ability to see it.
- 2020. Clearfind. Co-founded with Jocelyn Simons and bootstrapped. It showed a company every app it paid for, and what each one actually did.
Everything in your business is driven by data, except for software.
Source: Forbes, 2021 - Nov 2020. In TechCrunch. Covered at launch as a bootstrapped company helping firms cut software spend, by about 30% on its own figures. Source: TechCrunch, 2020
- Dec 2021. CDW partnership. Clearfind partnered with CDW, one of the largest technology resellers in the US, to bring it to their customers. Source: PR Newswire, 2021
- 2020. Treasury. General Partner in a fintech fund, alongside the co-founders of Betterment and Acorns. Source: Forbes, 2021
Act V: Answers you can check, for the decisions that matter.
AI can now answer almost anything. The change I see: people will only act on answers they can check. That is my work now, at Samplify and in the projects I am building myself.
The change I see now: trust, not intelligence, is the scarce thing.
- Now. Samplify. The decision layer for enterprise software buying. Deloitte tested it against their own experts, and Samplify was more accurate. Source: samplify.ai
- In development. Bright Future. Every route to a life in America, with the reasoning behind each one shown line by line.
- In development. Safe Harbor. A US tax tool that shows the rule behind every figure.
- Now. Surf City. Land on El Salvador's surf coast: a hotel above the port, a beach club, lots for sale.
- Early days. Awesomage. Education, support and a safe place to stay, for the children who need it most. Tested in Peru and El Salvador.
Ventures
- Samplify (Software decision intelligence). The decision layer for enterprise software buying. Deloitte tested it against their own experts, and Samplify was more accurate. samplify.ai
- Surf City (El Salvador). Land on El Salvador's surf coast: a hotel above the port, a beach club, lots for sale. surfcityinvestmentgroup.com
- Bright Future (In development). Every route to a life in America, with the reasoning behind each one shown line by line.
- Safe Harbor (In development). A US tax tool that shows the rule behind every figure.
- Awesomage (Working document). Education, support and a safe place to stay, for the children who need it most. The need is clear. The model is proposed. The money is unsolved.