It used to be that if you wanted to develop a high growth company you sprinted to raise capital first and build a business second. As a result VC’s sprung up like weeds. You raised as much as possible as quickly as possible – grew at warp speed and then hung on for the ride. [...]

Entrepreneur Andrew Rickman OBE (far left), is the founder and former non-executive chairman of Bookham,  the one-time second largest fibre optics telcom component producer in the world. Andrew set up the company as a start-up in 1988 and helped launch it to an FTSE100 company as CEO.