Life After DPIR - Mr Nick Alexander
Alumni 1976, Christ Church College
Summary
Nick matriculated in 1973 and read PPE at Christ Church which he enjoyed immensely. On graduating in 1976 he joined British Rail as a fast track management trainee believing that rail was the answer to many environmental problems. Unfortunately several months working on a variety of projects at BR convinced him otherwise and in 1977 he left to join EMI in the Group Planning department. A year later he moved to EMI Records, initially in planning and then, after doing the Institute of Marketing Diploma, as a label manager. He subsequently became Marketing Manager at HMV shops before moving to Thorn EMI Video Programmes as International Marketing Manager for Home Computer Software in 1982.
Another year on and Nick left EMI to set up Virgins first computer game company Virgin Games. It was my first proper start up and entirely engrossing. Another year on and having also started an in house design group for Virgin, Richard Branson asked Nick to become Marketing Director for the launch of his latest venture Virgin Atlantic Airways. It was completely mad, we had 3 months from start to the first flight and had not got a clue what we were doing. I would lie awake for the few hours a night I could get to bed and worry about what we had forgotten. It was a tremendous relief to get through the first flight with no major disasters. It was like doing Finals but far faster and with 1000s of lives potentially at risk!
Back with the computer game company, Virgin made several acquisitions culminating with buying Mastertronic, market leaders in budget games and holders of the rights to distribute Sega hardware and software in the UK. When we bought Mastertronic our combined turnover was 12m. Five years later and fuelled by distributing Sega across Europe our turnover reached 600m. It was an amazing period of growth.
In 1994 Nick left what had by then become Sega Europe, of which he was CEO, for another start up. This time funded by media group Pearson, owners of Penguin books, the Financial Times and many educational publishers, the aim was to build a multiple media male special interest publishing business. He bought Bath based magazine company Future Publishing for 52m as the core of the business. Over the next 3 years Pearsons top management changed and so did its strategy. In 1998 Nick sold Future Publishing back to its original owners but for 150m, having doubled turnover and quadrupled profits.
I thought I would take the summer off but it was 12 years before I had another executive job!
Nick embraced a portfolio career at first with Non Executive Directorships through IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) with 365 and StatPro and subsequently as Chairman of a range of small venture backed businesses mostly in entertainment.
Throughout this time Nick was peripherally involved in politics. In the early 80s he represented London on the National council of the Ecology Party lead by Jonathan Porritt. In 1985 he joined the SDP and worked on its youth campaigns and later was a Board member at the Social Market Foundation for many years. I dont have the passion for politics anymore. If I cant convince someone of my argument within five minutes I lose interest.
These days he has 40 acres of farmland not far from Oxford which he is gradually making into a contemporary version of 18th Century parkland. Its the most satisfying thing I have done so far.
He is currently Executive Chairman of mobile games company Connect2Media and Non Executive Chairman of game discovery portal TeePee Games.
