Buzzboard Digital Media

Buzzboard is a company founded with the dual aims of:

* Giving individuals and businesses an easy, cost-effective way to reach local customers.
* Providing useful information such as news and weather to communities where they live, shop and commute.

So often, digital screens are located inside stores, tucked away where you can only see them if you are shopping in that store. Each buzzboard that we install is visible from outside the store, giving it maximum visibility and reaching as many people as possible.

Ian Strang - Founder

Ian Strang, BSc, MBA is a UK national with extensive experience in setting up, growing and turning around service operations in technical industries. He is a strong people and project manager with international experience who has directed and managed up to 80 professional, technical and support staff with operating budgets of over £10 million. Proven relationship and coalition builder who has served as a panellist, co-author of industry guidelines, and representative to government, police and auditing bodies.
Ian spent 6 years within TRM Corporation (at the time, the 2nd largest ATM deployer in the world) working out of their UK and US offices, leading the migration of their US support to complete setup in the UK and in addition to managing the supply-chain elements, was responsible for security, compliance, commercial and technical development. He was then head-hunted by Arts Alliance Media where he modelled, costed, and then set up their national service operation from scratch, rolling out the UK Film Council’s Digital Screen Network. Ian holds a B.Sc. in Politics and an MBA from London Business School.

Guy Lawler - Founder

Guy Lawler has over 10 years experience of building and managing consumer-focused technology applications. He set up his first business aged 21 in 1991 offering home delivery of videos (and later DVDs) in and around Central London. In 1999 he co-founded the first online postal DVD rental company in Europe - Movietrak.com, and built strategic alliances with Dixons, The Guardian, lastminute.com & EMAP. The business was sold in 2004 as the industry consolidated and it became part of LoveFilm.
In 2006 he developed a video sharing platform that enables users to earn revenue from uploaded video content. The business was acquired by a national media group in 2008 and Guy continued as MD until 2010 when he joined buzzboard.

Matthew Witt - Non-Executive Director

Matthew Witt was COO of Active Hotels. Immediately prior to joining Active Hotels in 2000, he was general manager for 3 electronics production facilities in Benelux. Matthew joined Active Hotels at its very inception and was part of the management team that took Active from a start-up in 2000 through the trade sale to priceline.com in 2004, to becoming the number one European online hotel retailer in 2006. During this time, he has held roles in Sales, Distribution, Technology Development and Marketing.
Following the merger with Bookings BV in 2005, he continued as Chief Operating Officer for Active Hotels, overseeing the integration of the 2 companies’ technical and management systems, and the creation of a single operating business, Booking.com, with gross bookings of $1.9 Billion in the year to 30th June 2007, and over 600 employees. On the successful completion of the Booking.com integration, Matthew stepped down as a Director. He currently holds non-executive directorships at several other successful online businesses such as toptable.com and golfbreaks.com.

Dr Andy Phillipps - Investor
Andy Phillipps was co-founder and CEO of Active Hotels, which he helped to grow to become the largest on-line hotel booking company in Europe. The company was recognised as the fastest growing technology company in the UK by Deloitte, was a Sunday Times best employer and Andy won Emerging Entrepreneur of the Year. He sold the business to Priceline.com for $161 million in 2004 and was retained by Priceline.com to run their international operations.
He resigned as CEO in Q4 2005 following record profits for the international operations and was retained as a non-exec until Q2 2006. He has subsequently helped found, expand and/or invest in a number of start-ups, including Reevoo.com, i2o water, toptable.com and Moyses-Stevens and is on the board of Albion Ventures VCT. Entrepreneur in residence at INSEAD business school, Andy has a PhD from Cambridge and an MBA from INSEAD.