Simon had three related careers: military engineer/intelligence analyst, entrepreneur and finally film maker and investor in technology companies.
Highlights of the Army career included teaching at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, engineering in Bosnia and Northern Ireland, Pakistan Command and Staff course Quetta, lots of mountaineering (Alps, Peru and Alaska) and finally two periods on exchange with the Canadian Army firstly in Vancouver then Ottawa latterly as an intelligence analyst.
There was then an entrepreneurial decade building Exclusive Analysis (EA) which forecasted violent and political risks. EA’s niche was a managed global source network and very specific forecasts about world events. Principle client value came from rich-data pricing models for the insurance industry to which EA was the biggest provider of political intelligence. In 2012 Exclusive Analysis was acquired by IHS (now IHS/Markit).
In addition to running Bandoola Productions, Simon is a Non-Executive Director at Lowe and Fletcher. He invests in and/or advises a range of companies with digital offerings, including; Gift Wink, Sandpit, Deepcrawl. Areas of advice include: structuring a sales process, the value of brand and building robust code that clients actually want.
Bandoola Productions has completed two feature films Containment and Road Games. Soldier of Empires is currently our main project.
Simon has degrees from RMCS (Maths and Physics); MA in War Studies from the University of Baluchistan and an MPhil from Downing College, Cambridge in International Relations.
Present hobbies include riding a BMW motorbike, cross country skiing and sculling. He lives in Hereford and Chelsea during the week with his wife Jacquie who is a student at SOAS. Club is Sohohouse.
Battle of Imphal 