Team

 Simon Hill – Managing Director & Co-founder

Simon is an experienced business professional with proven track record. He has a strong background in SaaS B2B start-ups, having previously been Director Business Development with Huddle where he was involved from the early days and helped to grow that business through two funding rounds in excess of $15m through the signing of key strategic partnership deals with Hewlett Packard, InterCall, Orange, LinkedIn, AVG, Itochu and many others, giving Huddle a global reach to hundreds of millions of potential customers. Simon brings this experience to Wazoku which will service a very similar target customer base and is looking to replicate the incredible success at Huddle. Prior to Huddle, Simon spent 6 years as a Strategy Consultant with PwC and Deloitte, working with clients such as Seiko-Epson, Guardian and T-Mobile on strategy, innovation and C-level advisory projects.

James King – Director & Co-founder

James is an experienced company director having founded a number of companiesincluding Find Invest Grow UK Ltd (FIG) where he is co-founder and Managing Director. The Wazoku business idea is a pivot of the business concept analysis tool used by FIG and will ultimately replace the technology that the business uses. James is on the management team at Wazoku and is involved in both commercial, product and technology related business activities. James has worked at KPMG, a variety of events companies and at Nestoria.co.uk as a Business Analyst. Having studied at both Imperial and Leeds University, he was the recipient of a scholarship to Leeds University in the first ever entrepreneurial Scholarship Programme and whilst still a full time student he raised over £150,000 for an idea he had for a new business.

Kathryn Abram – Customer Communications Manager

With a background in marketing and communications in the not for profit sector, I’m a recent arrival to the wonderful world of start-ups. As Customer Communications Manager for Wazoku I’m involved in providing customer support, events, marketing, updating our blog, social media profiles and website.

I spend my spare time blogging and exploring London as my alter ego, Trip Stylist. As Trip Stylist I create self-guided London walks so spend my weekends wandering the streets of London looking for new places to go and checking out cafes, bars and restaurants (tough job!).

Nopadon Wongpakdee – Online Marketing

I’m a strategic online marketing leader with 15 years’ online experience in both large corporations and start-up environments. I’ve worked with several start-ups as an advisor and consultant in the US and UK.

My most recent role was the Head of Online Marketing for Huddle where I developed strategic marketing plans for lead generation, conversion and retention that contributed to exponential revenue and user growth, building a database of over a half a million B2B clients. I’ve got a very strong background in user acquisition, retention, SEM, SEO and social media. When I’m not busy thinking about Wazoku, I’m keep busy with my Muay Thai Blog, and running tours to Thailand for Thai Boxing enthusiasts.

Jonathan Scott – Developer

I’m a recent graduate of Southampton University with a MSc in Software Engineering where my dissertation focussed on influence and credibility within social networks. Wazoku is the second startup I’ve worked with, previously working for an online-only car leasing company while at university. Through this and also through freelance work I have experience with creating web applications using PHP, Python & Javascript. At Wazoku I primarily work with Python using the Django framework, and Javascript using jQuery.

Apart from working at Wazoku, I also write  software for long distance couples and blog, occasionally.

Robert Rees – Advisor

Robert is an advisor to Wazoku after having been our Chief Technical Officer. He joined the business as our lead developer and a member of the Management team in May 2011 and made a major impact on the business, shaping some of the key early decisions on the technology stack and product direction.

Robert was previously a Lead Consultant with global Agile consultancy ThoughtWorks where he lead a number of high profile projects for companies such as the Guardian Media Group and the BBC. He was also the team leader of AIM-listed Blueheath who were acquired by Booker Wholesale and has also worked on Carphone Warehouse’s European rollout of their insurance products.

Outside of Wazoku Robert is a technology leader and speaker on NoSql and emerging languages and is highly active in the London technical community.