Dan Douglas runs the startup accelerator, The Cloud and Compass, working with founders to help them scale up. He is the founder of StoreBoost, the retail media to OOH DSP and previously founded Liveposter, which sold to Dentsu and digital agency de-construct to Aegis. We asked who his digital hero is.
Who is your digital hero?
The Booth brothers, James and Simon, of TangoZebra and Scoota fame. James the commercial brain and Simon the tech guru you can actually talk to.
What have they done to win hero status in your eyes?
True Digital startup evangelists and entrepreneurs, disrupting the status quo without the deep pockets of better funded products / agencies.
They may not be the archetypal big name heroes featured in this column normally, but to those in the know they absolutely fit the title. A career working with your brother deserves applause on it’s own. The nicest brothers since the Winklevoss twins!
How has their heroism helped drive digital?
They’ve shown the startup world that you don’t need to sell out too soon to make it. A great product and organic growth is a viable route if you’re prepared to see it through.
While they might not have had the big pay days some of our contemporaries have had and their products have deserved, they are true digital natives and have helped create today’s entrepreneurial culture in adtech
What the biggest challenges in digital we need another hero to solve?
How to bring in the next generation of entrepreneurs to harness rather than be replaced by AI.
What is your most heroic personal achievement so far in digital?
Building the new Cloud and Compass Accelerator at our building 26 Britton St. We hope to take on 5 new founder based startups a year and get them an angel, a mentor and make them investable with a year.
We’ve been setting this up for the last year with a few already in the mix but plan to formalise it with scale in 2024 aiming at data driven start ups using our angels media connections to get them to the next stage of their growth.
My hope is that school leavers will have a viable platform with us and others to start up without the cost or need for a non essential and expensive university degree if their ideas and passion are right.
