Meet the Speaker: From engineer to media entrepreneur.

From mechanical engineer to media entrepreneur: meet Daniel Pitchford, CEO of Collingwood Advisory. Below he answers five quick questions in our “Meet the Mx3 Berlin Speaker” series.

Collingwood Advisory helps specialist media and information entrepreneurs to create value with their Scaleup and M&A advisory. It also runs a Scaleup programme — Crescent — for founders and CEOs of early s-age and smaller specialist media businesses.

Media Makers Meet (Mx3 Berlin) takes place on 19-20 October in Berlin, Germany. At Mx3 Berlin, Daniel will join John McGovern, and Lucy Küng for a conversation titled, Reports from the M&A frontline: Why betting on verticals is media savvy.

• See the draft agenda here.
• See the speakers so far confirmed here (note: where we have received their photos and biographies)

Di5rupt organises and hosts Mx3 Berlin in association with Deutsche Fachpresse, the German Business Media Association, and as local media partner MVFP, the German Free Press Media Association.

*****

SPECIAL SPEAKER OFFER TO ATTEND MX3 BERLIN

We offer readers of our speaker posts a 20 per cent discount on signing up for the event. You can sign up here to take advantage of the offer.

When registering, use the promotional code “Di5rupt_20” to get the discounted rate (on the page that opens when you click on “Tickets” on the sign-up page, the promo code link is in blue above “General Admission”).

Do note we will strictly limit the audience to around one hundred people to ensure a highly interactive, participatory experience for those in attendance.

*****

Tell us a little more about yourself.

I’ve lived in London most of my life, have an energetic two-year-old (who doesn’t let me sleep much), and a fantastic wife (who doesn’t let me moan about being tired). Having always loved travelling, we did a stint in the US and like to try new destinations a couple of times a year (Cape Town is still on top of my yet-to-do list). I’d rather talk about cycling or motorsport than football, although my favourite Saturday activity of late is taking my daughter to her football club and cheering her on as she scores a goal, or indeed misses. 

Tell us about your earlier career.

I’m a mechanical engineer that fell into the world of Media and hasn’t looked back since. I joined IIR and then Informa working in the TMT division – and worked in the commercial side of the business. I enjoyed running global events and media brands and the travel that came with it. Realising there was a world of opportunity and that one day I wanted to run my own business, I decided to join a smaller organisation to learn the ropes of ‘business’ rather than just ‘media’. It was there that my old business partner and I came across AI / Machine Learning as it was reemerging as a hot topic in the industry. We launched a blog in our spare time, which quickly grew into a media site, and then a global events series. We later sold this to Informa, which was a lot of fun, and also taught up some valuable lessons. 

Tell us about your current role.

In my current role as CEO for Collingwood Advisory, my focus is on building our own business, which in turn is about helping media entrepreneurs build and scale theirs. A lot of my time goes into understanding what our clients need and how we can help them create and crystallise value. It’s really fun and also provides an opportunity to learn each day from our clients and from our team of advisers. We’re all passionate about media, and having been operators ourselves, we know what it’s like to be in our client’s shoes. Putting our knowledge and experience to use in helping others avoid mistakes and achieve success is a fulfilling way to spend your day. 

What do you see as the main challenges for B2B/special interest media verticals?

Differentiating in a world of differentiation. Really finding, growing and engaging your niche and staying true to your core value proposition. Engaging and retaining audiences, which has been challenging through the past two years, but arguably will be tougher should the economic outlook worsen to the point some predict.  

What do you see as the main opportunities for B2B/special interest media verticals?

It’s a little obvious, but many great brands are still to capitalise on digital, and not just transforming print into online, but thinking about the ancillary services you can offer audiences and clients. Data has been long talked about as the big opportunity, and for B2B media sitting on or with the tools to capture first-party data, there is a huge untapped resource with multiple revenue streams. Communities are another aspect which can be accelerated through digital formats and present media companies with a route to developing a strong flywheel effect. 

*****

SPECIAL SPEAKER OFFER TO ATTEND MX3 BERLIN

We offer readers of our Meet the Speaker posts a 20 per cent discount on signing up for the event. You can sign up here to take advantage of the offer. 

When registering, use the promotional code “Di5rupt_20” to get the discounted rate (on the page that opens when you click on “Tickets” on the sign-up page, the promo code link is in blue above “General Admission”).

Do note we will strictly limit the audience to around one hundred people to ensure a highly interactive, participatory experience for those in attendance.

*****

Read our previous Meet the Mx3 Berlin Speaker post with James Hewes, President and CEO, FIPP – Connecting Global Media.