CONFERENCE SPEAKERS
£2.5K TO £5K
"James was a genuinely lovely man. We enjoyed his talk and he engaged well with the audience."
Scottish Institute for Enterprise
WIKIPEDIA
TOPICS
Energy & Sustainability
SPEECH TITLES
Doing business the right way
Future Trends
Technology and Online Finance
Customer Relationships and Marketing
BIOGRAPHY
It's all very well to have a bright idea, but it takes someone with James Alexander's vision to turn it into a reality. As co-founder of ZOPA ('zone of possible agreement'), James has developed not just a profitable internet-based business, but also a new way of borrowing and lending money.
The idea is that people with money to invest put it into ZOPA, where it is used to lend to small borrowers. Interest rates, for both lenders and borrowers, are better than those of the high street banks. As ZOPA is not a bank and is purely internet-based, there are no branches to maintain and transactions can be more transparent. Lenders can see who is borrowing their money and even what it is being used for!
James Alexander was also involved in the development of Smile, the Co-operative Bank's online division, when he worked for LEK Consulting. He went on to become Strategy Director for EGG, launching their digital tv and mobile services. He steered EGG through a period of rapid growth in the UK and laid the foundations for its entry into the US market.
James is also a committed environmental campaigner and is a trustee of Green Thing, an online not-for-profit social movement to mobilise the masses to act against climate change. He also advises Walkit.com and Mojo.com and was involved with Thames 21, a charity working with communities to create clean, safe and sustainable waterside environments in London. In his spare time, he is a keen birdwatcher and, during a trip to Africa, helped re-discover three species previously thought to be extinct.
James's advice to aspiring entrepreneurs is simple; "believe in yourself, trust offers of help from others and realise that even failure is not as bad as you might think it is!"
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Q&A
JLA: Is technology the starting point for innovation?
JA: Never. Consumers are always the starting point. Use technology to support propositions that consumers value.
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JLA: Will lack of credit halt entrepreneurial activity?
JA: I don't believe it. People with great ideas can always get them funded.
JLA: Is cleantech a life-saving revolution and a new gold rush, or a pipe dream?
JA: Living a more sustainable life and delivering more sustainable business is a necessity, not an option. Cleantech is a component of this - as a result of which some will get rich (like the gold rush), but many will fail.
JLA: Does recession speed up or delay the response to climate change?
JA: It speeds it up. The twin pressures of recession and climate change will both force us to re-consider our values and how we lead our lives.
JLA: Will long-term trends now dramatically change?
JA: I believe so, but it's not recession alone that prompts reassessment. It's a continuation of Schumpeter's 'waves of creative destruction' that have already transformed how we live and how we do business five times since the Industrial Revolution.