I caught with Mike Southon this morning at Thinking Digital. He addressed the conference yesterday with an inspiring speech using The Beatles a narrative for creating and growing a business.

“The Beatles themselves were entrepreneurs [....] They developed an Elevator Pitch (‘like Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry, only better…’) found a Mentor (their manager Brian Epstein), and then a First Customer, (producer George Martin, who signed them to EMI).”

During the 1980s Southon co-founded The Instruction Set, a computer services company, which he later sold to what is now Cap Gemini. He worked with 17 start-up ventures during the 1990s, two of which, Riversoft and Micromuse, later listed on the stock exchange. He writes a column for the Saturday FT on entrepreneurship and delivers over 100 presentations every year.

Southorn is also an experienced broadcaster and has released over 80 podcast-friendly interviews with famous industrialists, entrepreneurs and business experts. Tune in here to hear him in conversation with Allan Leighton, Sir Robin Saxby, SpinVox’s Christina Domecq and Nixon McInnes’ Will McInnes, amongst others.