Henry Braithwaite — Board Advisory
UK
§01 — Board Profile
— Board Profile
Co-founded and ran MarketMakers, growing it to the UK’s largest B2B demand-generation agency and leading its £20m sale to Centaur Media plc. Co-founder and COO of Lead Forensics, a bootstrapped B2B SaaS business with c.$50m annual revenue, around 5,000 customers and operations in the UK and US.
I bring founders and investors a practical view of what breaks as a company scales: the planning, people, systems and governance that have to change as a business moves from founder-driven to professionally run and investment-ready. I sit on the board of Fliplet, and I am a doctoral researcher at Henley Business School studying how founder-led companies plan and execute strategy.
2
B2B businesses co-founded and scaled, both bootstrapped
£20m
exit via full M&A process to Centaur Media plc
c.$50m
annual revenue at Lead Forensics, growing c.20% YoY
20+ yrs
at board level in founder-led companies
§02 — What I Bring to a Board
— What I Bring to a Board
For founder-CEOs: a peer who has sat in both the CEO and COO seat, has made the mistakes, and can act as a trusted sounding board on decisions that are hard to discuss inside the business.
Scaling the operating model: building the finance, legal, people and systems infrastructure that lets a company grow past the founder without losing pace.
Go-to-market and demand generation: built MarketMakers into a 300-person B2B lead-generation agency, and co-built the lead-generation and sales engine at Lead Forensics that delivers more than £10m of new business revenue a year.
Exit readiness and M&A: hands-on experience of a full sale process, buyer engagement, negotiation and post-deal integration.
Capital-efficient growth: two businesses scaled to 300+ people without relying on external funding, with the commercial and cost discipline that requires.
For investors: an experienced operator who can support management teams through a value-creation plan, strengthen reporting and cadence, and help founders adjust to working with an investor.
§03 — Board and Advisory Roles
— Fliplet | 2025 – Present
Board Advisor, Non-Executive Board
AI-first enterprise software platform that lets organisations build secure internal apps, client portals and digital workplace tools quickly and at scale.
Member of the non-executive board, advising the CEO and leadership team on scaling, organisation design and commercial execution.
Brings operating experience from two founder-led scale-ups to board discussions on growth priorities, go-to-market and scaling considerations.
Open to a small number of further non-executive and advisory appointments, particularly with founder-led B2B businesses scaling through complexity.
§04 — Executive Career
— Lead Forensics | 2018 – Present
Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Bootstrapped B2B SaaS company specialising in website visitor identification. Headquartered in England with c.380 people across five offices, c.$50m annual revenue, growing c.20% year on year.
Co-founded the business and have helped build it into an established international SaaS operator with a significant recurring revenue base serving around 5,000 customers, including major global brands.
Lead finance, legal and compliance, people, IT, systems and business operations across a UK holding company with UK and US subsidiaries.
Work alongside the CEO on strategy, organisation design, executive decision-making and the company’s strategic agenda.
Led the business through COVID with a focus on customer retention, service quality and employee morale.
Built risk and governance frameworks, including a contract escalation process and red/amber/green guardrails for commercial terms.
Sponsor the company’s internal AI programme, including agents for contract review and sales and customer success support.
— MarketMakers | 2004 – 2018
Co-Founder, Chief Executive Officer
B2B marketing and demand-generation agency with £15m revenue and c.300 people. Sold to Centaur Media plc in 2017.
Co-founded the business and, as COO and then CEO, built it over 13 years into the largest B2B demand-generation agency in the UK, without external funding.
Led the full M&A process from preparation to completion, resulting in a £20m sale to Centaur Media plc.
Stayed on for a year after the sale to lead integration into Centaur and hand over to the incoming CEO, gaining first-hand experience of founder transition from both sides.
§05 — Sector and Board Expertise
— Sector and Board Expertise
Sectors: B2B SaaS, data and martech; B2B marketing and demand-generation agencies; AI-enabled software
Business stage: Bootstrapped and owner-managed, scale-up (£2m–£40m revenue), pre-exit and post-acquisition
Board themes: Growth strategy, operating model and organisation design, exit readiness and M&A, GTM
Functions led: Sales, Marketing, Finance, People, legal and compliance, IT, Customer success
Geography: UK-headquartered businesses with international operations, including the US
§06 — Research
— Henley Business School | October 2026 – Present
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), Doctoral Researcher
Henley Business School, University of Reading. Part-time doctoral programme undertaken alongside executive and board work.
Research focus: strategic planning quality and execution in founder-led, owner-managed businesses as they scale.
The research asks why high-growth companies so often rely on reactive rather than deliberate planning, and what changes inside the organisation when they move to a more proactive approach to strategy. It starts from a practical observation: critiques of over-formal planning were largely written about large organisations, while smaller scaling businesses tend to face the opposite problem, with too little structured strategic thinking to support the next stage of growth.
Why it matters to the boards I work with
Evidence, not just experience: my board contribution is grounded in 20+ years of operating experience and increasingly in current research and strategy theory.
Planning discipline: practical frameworks for helping founder-led companies move from ad hoc decisions to a planning rhythm that the leadership team and investors can rely on.
Access and perspective: the research draws on founder and leadership networks including Boardwave and Business Leader, keeping my view of what works in scaling businesses current.
§07 — Education
— Education
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), Henley Business School | 2026 – Present
Master of Business Administration (MBA), Durham University Business School | 2014
Awarded with Merit.
§08 — Contact
— Contact
I’m always happy to talk with founders, chairs and investors about board and advisory roles.
Location: Bosham, West Sussex, UK