Mike Walton, Founder & CEO
Mike combines both big-company sales and management experience with start-up and high-growth company leadership. He has over 22 years of technology and consulting experience, having founded and built three services companies in the last decade. He started his career working in sales and sales management at ICL and Oracle, before co-founding Viant - a Silicon Valley Internet and e-commerce services company - in 1996. Viant was backed by Kleiner Perkins, Caulfield & Byers. Mike has worked in many industry sectors, with particular emphasis on the financial services sector during the five years he lived in the US.
On his return to the UK, he became the founder and CEO of Rubus, a venture-backed technology consultancy, and grew the company to over 300 employees in five locations in Europe. Mike's experience in building teams and attracting high-calibre employees earned Rubus a highly respected reputation with clients, together with a dynamic and rewarding company culture. Rubus' quality was recognised by the industry when Mike won the Ernst & Young UK Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year award, and Rubus received a string of awards from the CBI's Most Promising Company award to the winner of the Deloitte Fast 50. Mike sold Rubus to Detica PLC in 2003.
Mike was Business Unit Director for Detica's Commercial business unit for 12 months, before leaving to evaluate new technology opportunities. Having identified Open Source as a major new technology trend, he founded Opsera to provide software and services in this growing market. Mike was responsible for developing the vision and strategy, recruiting the initial team, raising angel funding, and establishing the operations for Opsera. He is now primarily responsible for our strategy, sales and operations, as well as consulting for our high-growth clients.
Mike holds a Joint Honours BSc in Physics and Electronics from Brunel University.