Louis Pope

An index of the physical world. Every bar, restaurant, shop and venue as a record with structured attributes, so a place can be queried properly rather than searched for by name and hoped over.

Partnerships with TopJaw, Pub Club and Byke. Being built now, with a founding team.

Chief of staff on the founding team of an AI startup in private markets. Strategy, operations and commercial.

That is as much as the NDA allows.

I joined the restructuring and insolvency team on a contract in April 2024. Within two years Evelyn had converted me to permanent and promoted me from Restructuring Executive to Assistant Manager, both ahead of standard tenure.

The mandates are some of the most varied the firm runs: formal insolvencies, MVLs and CVLs end to end, and advisory work before things break.

The largest was Park First, a CVA with more than 5,000 creditors and around £200m at stake. I ran point on the financial modelling, the creditor communications and the negotiation strategy that carried the proposal through.

Studying for the ITIQ+ insolvency qualification.

I built the client base, the rotas and the payroll, and ran it alongside everything else on this page.

Hundreds of people employed. Still trading with the clients it started with.

Operational structure, suppliers and the website, with Georgia Gibson.

Private equity analyst at Hamilton Bradshaw, reporting directly to James Caan CBE and the firm's investment directors.

The portfolio ran across 19 countries, so the work did too: due diligence, deal structuring, and the day to day relationship with founders and operating partners in each market, each with its own culture and way of working.

Six joint ventures went from first due diligence to operational launch while I was there. Whatever the business needed, I picked up.

Hired onto the team launching the first official Formula 1 Exhibition. Six months, from empty rooms to doors open.

I set up the warehouses in Essex and Oxford personally, then shipped tens of millions of pounds of cars, trophies and race artefacts around the world, coordinating between Formula 1, Round Room Studios and the constructor teams.

For the opening I moved to Madrid and worked unsupervised, doing whatever that week needed: logistics, install, fixes.

It opened at IFEMA Madrid in spring 2023, the first venue of a ten year global programme.

A full research cycle on the UK Small Cap Fund: company profiles, valuation comparisons and sector screens used in the weekly investment meetings.

I built and maintained the position monitoring sheets, sat in on management meetings and earnings calls, and drafted the summary notes that went to the investment team.

The summer ended with the flag over Buckingham Palace at half mast.

Surf host, alongside the degree.

Training in digital advertising and audience scale.

Three years of brand work with the agency, fitted around study and jobs.

A family business making bespoke motorcycle intercom adapters, so a rider is not locked into whichever intercom their helmet maker chose for them.

I worked on it from concept through to launch and now lead sales, alongside the back office: the Shopify build and a restock system running across warehouses in Wrexham and Venlo.

Over ten thousand units sold, averaging 4.7 out of 5.

A partnership between Hargreaves Lansdown and the university.

Finished as head bartender in Bristol. Three years of it, and I would do it again.

Six months. Promoted out of the warehouse into a design role, working directly with clients.

A summer course.

An internship in the Estates, Appraisals and Valuations department.

Part of the school community service programme.

Weekly visits to the residents, for as long as I was at school.

Quantitative Analysis in Management. Accounting & Finance for Managers. Strategic Finance. Design & Systems Thinking for Innovation. International Business Management.

Three years in which I also pulled pints, started two businesses and kept turning up on film sets.

Two years in the cadet force. The flying was the point.

D2, D3 and M3, the equivalent of A*AB, on top of nine IGCSEs at the top grade.

School Prefect. The Lady Morse Prize, and the Raising Books Prize twice.

Passed the Winchester Entrance examination in place of Common Entrance.

A university project that turned into a real business. Cameras posted in, developed by hand in Bristol, photographs returned digitally.

Demand was fine. The machines were not. The cameras kept falling between the rollers of Royal Mail's sorting machinery, and that was the end of it.

It is on this page because it taught me more than most of the things that worked.

Script supervisor on a feature production.

The camera kit travelled in whatever car was free that morning.

His Dark Materials, Doctor Who, Brave New World and Industry, across four years of school and university holidays.

Mostly you wait. But you learn exactly how a set runs, which mattered later when I was the one running one.

Eight years mostly outdoors. I have been making things out of what is to hand ever since.

Not a job. Here for completeness.

A race down the whole of Sri Lanka. Our team raised more than £100,000.