Ian J. Valentine
Investment Partner in Mauritius and London, UK
Sponsored by BAe, Ian studied Electronic Engineering at Southampton Uni, Graduating with both a BSc (Hons) and post graduate Diploma of Engineering Management.
He is now a Partner/CTO at a specialist PE Firm.
From 2014 - 2022 he worked for Huawei as a global TV, Technology and Business Consultant.
In the 90s he specialised in business process transformation for large corporates. He designed and deployed large, distributed, Open Systems based multi-channel CRM systems in call centres worldwide.
His product concept and it’s prestigious UK projects, won 3 major accolades in 1995, at the X/Open Software Industry awards.
Moving to specialise in Interactive TV, he founded and sold a technology company to BSkyB, and became known for inventing the technology behind the “Red Button” on Sky. His solution, a microbrowser and internet gateway enabled interactive, picture-in-picture shopping, betting and other services around TV channels for the first time on Sky.
As a founder board member of Sky’s R&D department, he pioneered the first open “App Store” for TV, and cultivated an Internet based developer community for TV applications. He published 2 ETSI standards and filed 9 Patents.
Ian earnt his pilots licence in 2002 and his Instrument rating in 2003. He set up Freeflight Aviation Ltd. a shared ownership scheme aimed at making technically advanced aircraft more available. At its peak he operated 7 Cirrus aircraft across 65 active pilots.
Ian flew the North Atlantic twice (West to East) to ferry aircraft to the UK and was at one time amongst the top 10 most experienced Cirrus pilots in Europe.
His Connected TV venture “Miniweb”, was a spin-out from BSkyB, and raised £14m to develop the first online Video Marketplace for Connected TV devices, winning best of show at IBC in 2009, and by 2011 was deployed widely on major “A” brand Connected TVs.
Then Ian consulted and freelanced on TV, AI, IoT, Crypto and tech of all types. He has delivered Strategy, Programme and Product management services to major Operators throughout Europe, Africa and Russia.
A transformative project undertaken was creating a Pay TV product for the 4th largest retailer in Russia. TVzor was a hybrid DTT/OTT TV platform. He provided Strategy, Product, Business, Technology and Programme Management services on a contract basis.
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