Daniel Ross
From venture studios and family investment groups to startups and communities, I've spent much of my career helping turn ambitious ideas into ventures, partnerships and communities — often before the path is obvious, consensus exists or the playbook has been written.
Where I Add the Most Value
I help make progress where there isn't yet an obvious playbook — becoming fluent quickly in new contexts, then helping create clarity and momentum.
Incubating and launching new businesses, propositions and growth platforms — from NEOM ventures to Chorus.
Acting as a sounding board, strategic partner and operator to founders, CEOs, investors and family principals.
Giving commercial shape to early propositions — defining them, testing assumptions, designing pilots and creating a credible path to market.
Stepping into new sectors, learning quickly, earning credibility and making sound commercial decisions.
I've done this across early crowdfunding, family investment groups, venture studios, global sports communities and community-led growth work with consumer brands.
Most of my career has been spent in rooms where I wasn’t supposed to be an expert yet. The pattern has been remarkably consistent: learn quickly, build credibility and help people move something meaningful forward.
Highlights
2,000+
Leaders connected across 40+ countries through Sports Business Syndicate, a community I launched from scratch and grew into one of the industry's most influential networks.
£31m+
Annual investment facilitated through CrowdBnk.
3
New ventures built with NEOM across healthcare, biotech and AI-powered customer intelligence.
100+
Conversations with thinkers, athletes and leaders across sport, business and behavioural science through A Load of BS and A Load of BS on Sport, platforms I created and built from scratch.
What I spend my time doing
Turning early opportunities into ventures, strategic initiatives and communities.
Writing and speaking about behaviour, leadership, decision-making and participation.
Socialising non-obvious directions, building confidence, creating buy-in and getting disparate people moving in the same direction.
SELECTED WORK
Building new ventures across healthcare, biotech and AI-powered customer intelligence.
Working across Egypt and Saudi Arabia with scientists, clinicians, entrepreneurs, designers and operators to take early ideas through validation, proposition development and seed funding opportunities. Leading multidisciplinary teams and applying design thinking and lean startup principles to turn ambitious concepts into credible businesses.
Building participation around a fragmented industry.
What began as an experiment grew into a global sports business community spanning more than forty countries, creating introductions, partnerships, hires, investments, clients and friendships.
Conversations
Featuring Jonny Wilkinson, Charlie Methven and Bryan Habana — with short reflections on the themes that stayed with me.
A conversation about perfectionism, pressure, identity and what it takes to decouple self-worth from performance.
What are your incentives quietly encouraging you to do instead?
Whose scorecard are you currently using?
Writing
Why businesses need to move beyond transactional marketing and treat community as connective infrastructure for retention, participation and long-term value.
Why the strongest communities are built not around platforms or content calendars, but around repeated behaviours that create shared attention, meaning and belonging.
A reflection on risk, uncertainty and why our need to make the future predictable often blinds us to how messy real life actually is.
CONTACT
If you're building something new, working through something complicated or trying to bring the right people together, feel free to get in touch.
Start a conversation →