Tom Ball

Current

Director at Cognac

Past

Founder / CEO at CD9
Door-door sales executive ;o) at The Southwestern Company

Education

Cambridge, St John's College

Recommended

10 people have recommended Tom

Connections

500+ connections

Industry

Marketing and Advertising

Websites

Tom Ball’s Summary

Quick introduction, I am a passionate innovator - I live for new ideas. I love to build companies. To change industries (aim high!). To achieve "the impossible".

I was once told that I am "helplessly in love with people". Not sure if it's a good thing - but I rather liked it, and hope it's at least partly true! I LOVE spending time with good people. To me "good" means people that are passionate about life and something that they do - you get "good" people in every walk of life - and often where you least expect it. I'm getting an ever increasing soft spot for kids - how much energy do little folk have?!

Favourite Days: Getting engaged (*The* moment Jenny said yes below ;o) Getting married (Got lots of photos of that - one below!) and the CD9 office launch party in November 2000 - 200 amazing people, Frank Sinatra live in the board room, fireworks out the back, a bar in the lift, me in Red tails & white tie ... and the team from heaven - joy! People often ask me where I get my energy, enthusiasm and zest for life from. Hopefully you'll meet her one day.

Recent History: I spent five years building an Internet consultancy to 25 full time people, many blue chip clients and $2M turnover. Then restructured to a new niche and then finally gone through a full liquidation. A fairly educational few years.

Cognac:

Cognac: the big picture company

"85% of the information in the brain is stored visually. Studies show that visuals nearly triple the communication experience. So don’t even think about presenting anything to anyone, if you’re not going to use visual aids..."

Cognac creates "big pictures", large diagrams which visually communicate your message in ten minutes (guaranteed).

See http://www.cognac.co.uk/ for case studies

How can I help you?

Tom Ball’s Specialties:

Sales Aids, Internal Communication, Visual Communication

Tom Ball’s Experience

Director

Cognac

(Privately Held; 1-10 employees; Marketing and Advertising industry)

September 2002 — Present (6 years 11 months)

We explain complexity using very large pieces of paper so people understand what your company does, so you make more money. They are primarily used as sales aids to close more sales faster. As training aids to attract and retain talent and as business plans to aid funding.

We have just closed a round of funding, moved to much larger offices and recruited new members of the team.

I would love to meet up with you and show you what we do.
Founder / CEO

CD9

(Public Company; 11-50 employees; Internet industry)

September 1997 — July 2002 (4 years 11 months)

Built CD9, a leading web design firm from a laptop in my bedroom to 25 full time employees and revenues of over £1.35million. I am immensely proud of the team that we built, the work that we did - and the passion with which we did it.

Corporate client projects included designing, building and hosting Philips.co.uk, Countryside Properties, Workspace Group PLC, projects with HSBC, CGNU, Reuters, Alliance&Leicester.

Dot-com clients included the world's first website for buying any new UK car with options on your credit card in 90 seconds (in 1998!), an online trading platform for taxis and some of the first low-cost editable websites (Also in 1998!).
Door-door sales executive ;o)

The Southwestern Company

(Marketing and Advertising industry)

1996 — 1996 (less than a year)

Tom Ball’s Education

Cambridge, St John's College

MA MEng , Engineering , October 1993 — July 1997

Fantastic time - not purely an academic, but did a lot of Engineering / product design / organising events ...

Activities and Societies:

Bollingers