The FCP Management Team
A great blend of recruitment experience, high technical competence and a passion for excellence in everything we do.
Non-Executive Chairman – Stephen Bullock
Stephen Bullock is a successful entrepreneur and a full time Private Investor and Consultant to early stage companies with a significant portfolio in the Internet, Technology and Software, B2B services, Media and Healthcare sectors.
Stephen’s management and consulting abilities have been built on a career that moved from senior marketing and director positions in the Healthcare sector, to founding, with venture capital backing, Medical Action Communications (MAC), an international marketing agency. Winning the BCVA start-up of the year in 1992, Bullock developed MAC to become a global market leader. In 1997, he negotiated the sale of the business to a NASDAQ-quoted Pharmaceutical CRO and became CEO of a global specialist division.
Stephen has 8 years of experience as a Board level advisor and consultant to early stage businesses, guiding them through critical growth phases, including achieving market leading positions. He is currently Chairman or a Non Executive Director in a number of portfolio companies.
CEO – Nick John
As the ‘old man’ of the team, Nick qualified back in the dark ages in E & E Engineering from what is now Southampton Solent University.
He started his career as an RF Designer with Philips but quickly realised that he hadn’t digested enough of the technical stuff to bluff his way through so after a few short years he migrated across first to Technical Marketing and subsequently to Product Marketing.
He helped build marketing teams within the semiconductor industry with such giants as Motorola in Scotland and then Intel in both the UK and Germany. After some nine or ten years in this industry, he was tempted into the realms of executive recruitment where he was able to use his industry knowledge to good effect.
Ultimately, in 2003 he set up his own recruitment company with colleagues and set about building a boutique business with specialist skills in Aerospace and Defence resourcing.
In 2007 he was approached by the FCP board to take on a number of challenges facing the business at that point. He brings sector experience to the business, ensuring that the recruiters influence remains central to the core proposition that is evolve™.
With a grown up family having either flown the nest or who face the challenge of University, Nick uses his spare time to enjoy the occasional game of golf but he remains true to his welsh roots and is a passionate rugby supporter!
CTO - Ben Stoneham
A geeky kid, Ben spent the early 1980s hacking around Janet on a BBC model B and endless weekends typing out long programs into a Comodore Vic 20 (that inevitably then failed as a result of a printing error!).
As an original founder of FCP, Ben started his working life selling vacuum cleaners door to door in the late 1980s. He moved on in 1990 to a more respectable role on joining the purchasing department of MI and Pro-audio retail and distribution group Turnkey PLC. During the decade that followed the company grew from just over 2M to 25M T/O. Ben joined the board of Turnkey's parent company MediaTools PLC in 1997.
In 1999, Ben won a place at The School of Management, Birkbeck Colledge, University of London to study for a post graduate MSc in International Business Strategy. His research area was the business of Open Source Software develpment and concluded with the thesis 'Technological Systems and Competitive Dynamics: Microsoft, Anti-trust and Open-Source Development', for which he was awarded a distinction in 2000.
Since 2001 Ben has worked to develop and build FCP. He is still very much involved in 'The business of open source' - from a less academic perspective..!
In addition to his commercial background, Ben has acquired substantial experience running complex software development programs, unix and high-availability clustered/ multitenant platform architectures.
Other than an obsession with 'great' engineering and technology generally, Ben other interests include Skydiving and Scubadiving for which he holds USPA A license and Padi Divemaster qualifications respectively. For some strange reason, he is also a BS7671 qualified electrician.
