An Ex-Founder looking for problems to solve
REAL WORLD EXPERIENCE THAT SAVES YOU TIME AND MONEY
Mercury Frontiers exists to provide direct assistance to early-stage founders and businesses who want to launch fast and accelerate growth. I have spent 22 years building businesses, earning hard-won experience at double speed and made many millions pounds of mistakes so that you don’t have to.
If I can’t save you at least 5x my cost in the first 30 days then you should fire me. The first hour of help is completely free and there is no commitment required.
WHAT
Direct assistance for early-stage high-growth businesses from someone who has actually done it before.
Insights and execution based on direct and relevant experience.
Injections of knowledge and skills.
Experience and energy deployed rapidly and cost effectively.
If you were trying to fly a plane for the first time, imagine the value of even a few hours with a seasoned pilot.
WHO
John Agnew has successfully founded and scaled 10 profitable businesses generating more than £50m enterprise value as a Founder and Operator.
Over 20+ years of real-world direct experience he have built three businesses from idea to US$2m revenues and scaled two other ventures to £10m.
John has also raised £6.5m of equity and £5m of debt, managed leveraged debt facilities of £30m, bought £50m of assets and executed in some of the most hostile operating environments on earth.
HOW
You get direct actionable assistance – things you should do now to accelerate and improve your model based on millions of pounds of mistakes and experience.
This is not a co-founder (who soaks up your equity) or a consultant (who milks you for fees by taking as long as possible to write a report). You will get hard and fast practical input from day one.
John has been the Founder, the MD, the COO the sales guy and the Finance Director and he can fast forward you to what works and help you avoid what doesn't.
CONTACT US
John.Agnew@MercuryFrontiers.com
Tel: +44 (0) 20 3290 4340
Mercury Frontiers is led by John Agnew who provides consultancy, project management and interim assistance to SMEs, more established private sector companies and larger corporations based on his 10 years experience establishing, funding and growing businesses in challenging and extreme frontier markets. As a frontier Managing Director, John has experienced many of the same challenges that businesses continue to face and offers his experience to directly bolster your team across a wide range of functions. Mercury Frontiers offers a wide spectrum of assistance from strategic and positioning advisory down to on the ground, hands on project and crisis management and interim management.
ABOUT US
Mercury Frontiers is brought to you by John Agnew who has spent a wild career gaining real-world experience at perhaps double or triple speed. Following a law degree at Oxford, he joined a 3-person startup that hyper-scaled and exited for £32m in 5 years. By the ripe old age of 26 he had already been the Ops Director and Commercial Director of a Car Sharing Club with £4m revenues and £30m of assets.
Another high growth scale-up followed with revenues doubling in a year before a move to Australia, then Dubai and Africa. After some advisory work to launch businesses in Kenya and Tanzania and Cameroon, John went into South Sudan on its 10th day of existence and launched and built two businesses to $5m sales and profitability. On the way home he spent year in Uganda restructuring and scaling a $17m motorcycle leasing portfolio.
His experience and knowledge of how to build businesses in these extreme and developing operating environments drives his understanding of the need for practical, realistic and effective solutions – getting stuff done.
John did his first stint with Mercury back in the UK in 2016 to provide advisory services and direct assistance to companies facing the challenges of accelerated growth based on his multiple experiences of those steep learning curves.
In 2020 he saw a recurring problem with small business frustrations in getting access to vans so he founded and built DriveSimple to provide flexible van subscriptions in the Uk. Having built the business to a £5m asset base and £1.5m recurring revenues he handed over to a CEO so he could step back into an ownership role.
John has held functional roles an MD, FD, COO, CTO, Sales, and Commercial Director with broad Sector experience in Healthcare, FMCG, vehicles, leasing, logistics and luxury products. Perhaps more importantly, he has actually been the driving force behind 16 separate first hand experiences of building business. He made it happen rather than just being in the room when it happened.