Roles: Chairman, Investor and Business Coach
John Caines’s career may be summarised as “10 years as a a portfolio director following 20 years of leading software and services businesses which in turn followed 10 years of finding out what he wanted to do”. Without reaching any final conclusion on that question, he enjoys what he does now sufficiently to stop asking it.
John’s initial career choice of accounting was too confining so he qualified and got out as quickly as he could. Of course, finance transpired to be an excellent base for a business career. He then opted for all available marketing and international business electives during an MBA at London Business School. He surprised himself by becoming the first CFO of Westbury where rapid change and high growth helped him move quickly from business theory to practice before a difference of opinion with the family owners gave him the ‘opportunity’ for a career change .
From an appetite to start his own business John formed Minerva Computer Systems in 1980 and grew it to 75 staff over the following 10 years. Minerva had two lines of business (one too many). In Systems for Charities, Minerva demonstrated that an agile small enterprise could be become a highly profitable market leader; in Manufacturing Systems it demonstrated only that a ‘me too business in a declining sector’ would do well to subsist. Fortunately the former far outweighed the latter.
All markets move in cycles and/or structurally – a truism often forgotten by busy CEO’s. Help in appreciating current and impending changes in a company’s market, surely provides a necessary and sufficient case for a NXC even before other contributions.
The cycles around Minerva’s business were running their course and in seeking renewal, John discovered a hot new technology at the time - an ERP package available for distribution in the UK. Anticipating its potential, John sold his established business and with 8 staff took the new product forward under the banner of Maxima. It grew to £40 million p.a. of profitable revenues and 500 staff over the next decade. As another business cycle ended with the new millennium, John sold the company to management.
He soon became involved in the entrepreneurial world taking on recovery assignments, coaching CEO’s and investing in a series of ventures. The spine of his portfolio has been half a dozen chairmanships where he has co-invested with and represented VC’s or business angel syndicates.
His current appointments are with Kallidus, a VC backed MBO eLearning and Talent Management company and Zeta Compliance Group plc a PLUS quoted Risk Management enterprise.
In the fast moving ventures in which John is typically involved, the role of the NXC is often centred on guiding the CEO’s attention towards the right priorities. Working through the right agenda the latter usually finds the right answers. If they don’t and occasionally in other circumstances, the ‘N’ of NXC may need to disappear and the Chairman move into executive mode –such calls need to be timely and correct, but that’s another story.
John Caines was awarded an OBE for ‘services to business and entrepreneurship…’ in 2009. He may be contacted at jmc@eqap.com and on +44 (0) 7785 253539.
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