Dan Cobley
Managing Partner, Fintech, Blenheim Chalcot. Former Managing Director, Google UK and Ireland
Drawing from a career at the cutting edge of technology businesses, Dan Cobley helps audiences grasp the imperative for change and navigate future opportunities. With rich and entertaining examples from Google, his startup portfolio, and elsewhere, Cobley brings a fresh perspective to any audience, helping energize them towards action with a blend of inspiration and practical, usable advice.
Under $25,000
Dan is an entrepreneur and investor in innovative tech startup businesses, focusing on financial services. He leads the FinTech portfolio for Blenheim Chalcot, a long-established London venture builder. Through this role, he has co-founded a number of fast-growth FinTech companies including: Salary Finance, Koodoo Mortgages, OpenWrks, and ClearScore, and he is on the boards of Liberis, Modulr, and Tully.
Cobley is also an investor and advisor to a number of companies including Brompton Bicycle, Personal Boardroom, Onfido, Qubit, Fospha, and Hive Learning.
Until late 2014, Cobley spent over eight years at Google. For the last three years, he was Managing Director, UK & Ireland – the biggest market for Google outside the U.S. and the most advanced major country in terms of e-commerce and online advertising spending. Cobley was promoted to the UK MD role after five years in Google marketing, first as Marketing Director, UK, Ireland and Benelux and then as VP Marketing, EMEA.
Previously, Cobley was VP of Brand and Marketing for Capital One Europe, Marketing Director for Ask Jeeves, and Marketing Director at Pepsi/Walkers.
Cobley is a regular keynote speaker at conferences, speaking on the disruptive power of FinTech, technology, innovation, and Google’s unique approach to business. He is also an accomplished moderator, interviewer, and after-dinner speaker. Cobley has shared his thoughts on Physics and Marketing at the TED conference and with over 1.4 million people online. He was named as number three in Wired UK top 100 list 2012 and among the Maserati 100 Innovators of the Year in 2018. He appeared on BBC’s Tomorrow’s World as a technology commentator and helped Alan Sugar choose his 2014 Apprentice.
Featured Videos
Dan Cobley
Fintech Entrepreneurs, Opportunities and Challenges - MEA Fintech Forum - Feb 20
Dan Cobley’s Speech Topics
Pretotyping - A Vital Toolkit for Validating Ideas for New Products or Services Quickly, Objectively and Accurately
With the seismic shift in consumer attitudes and preferences that will follow the Covid-19 pandemic, we will all have to reassess our offerings. Pretotyping is a smart approach, developed by Google, to evaluating genuine customer responses to a proposition, before investing heavily in developing it. In an interactive workshop (even over video!) Dan Cobley will help teams understand the power of this approach and how to adopt it in their every day business. He will leave the teams with a reduced fear of failure and an ability to iterate on ideas more quickly and cheaply.
Getting Ready for the Rebound - Creating a Culture that Responds to Seismic Change
The winners of the past 25 years have been driven by technology and digital. The current lockdown has driven a massive and immediate change in digital adoption, digital ways of working and customer expectations. This presents huge opportunities to organisations that can respond to the change more quickly and an existential threat to those that cannot. But adapting to change is hard.
Dan Cobley spent the dot.com crash in Silicon Valley, the financial crisis leading Google UK, and the past 6 years building some of Europe's top fintech startups. Drawing on this experience he will talk about the changes that the current crisis is driving, what is likely to stick, and how companies can develop a culture that is more flexible and nimble. More than ever it is the organisations that are the most responsive to change that will survive and thrive.
The Digital Imperative
For organizations seeking to drive digital transformation, Dan will light a fire under the project. With rich data and memorable anecdotes he will help engage everyone in the room in the cause and give highly practical advice on how to build a culture that can succeed on the journey.
Learning How To Fail
For companies that are seeking a more agile, innovative organisation, learning how to fail (quickly, cheaply and in a way that drives learning) is critical. With lessons from Google and startup land, Dan will make the case for a culture change and give you the tools to make it happen.
The Second Order Impacts of Technological Revolution
Ideally suited to a fireside chat format, Dan will answer questions on what has driven the massive technology-led disruption of the past decades and how we should have seen it coming. Then he will look ahead at future disruption (AI, autonomous vehicles, etc.) and explore what primary shifts will be and the important second order impacts.
Disruption in Financial Services
Financial services are going through a period of dramatic change like never before, with the UK at the vanguard. Drawing on his experience with a number of leading UK fintechs, Dan will explore the drivers of change, the characteristics of winners, and the imperative for everyone in financial services that wants to survive.
What other organizations say about Dan Cobley
The feedback is short and simple: Fantastic. The presentation was extremely well received by both customers and staff. Nothing to add.
Technology
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