Blog - Corniche Growth Advisors

03 Feb 2026

The rise of the technical Founder/CEO in European Tech

In the last few years, a notable shift has reshaped European tech leadership. Technical founders—those with deep engineering, data science, or software backgrounds—are increasingly taking the CEO seat, or at least co-leading as CEO. This trend marks a departure from the 2010s, when many European...

03 Feb 2026

The Independent Chair: The Missing Piece in VC and PE-Backed Boards

For many technopreneurs, the question of who chairs the board is treated as an administrative detail rather than a strategic choice. Yet in high-growth, investor-backed tech companies, the chairmanship quietly shapes how decisions are made, how conflicts are managed, and how value is ultimately crea...

31 Jan 2026

Winning when agents own the customer

AI “agents” are increasingly acting autonomously when purchasing on behalf of their humans. For online merchants and marketplaces, this shift raises the strategic question: where in the value chain do you want to sit when software starts owning the customer journey? Less browsing, more briefs to...

19 Oct 2025

How Corporate Venture Capital is reshaping innovation

Andrew Bolwell Futurist, Chief Disrupter and Global Head of HP Tech Ventures The corporate venture capital landscape is undergoing a fundamental transformation, driven by evolving economic conditions, new organisational models, and the increasing convergence of internal R&D with external innova...

19 Oct 2025

How to maximise founder equity from day one

For early-stage technopreneurs, ownership is everything. The proportion of equity a founder retains over time determines both long-term wealth and the degree of control they maintain over their business. Yet many founders lose more equity than necessary through early-stage decisions that can easily ...

26 Sep 2025

Do serial technopreneurs really have the capital raising edge?

The prevailing wisdom is that this edge is real, both in terms of the ease of raising and in achieving better terms. Pitchbook research* shows that early-stage companies founded by serial technopreneurs are valued at 2x – 3x those founded by first timers. This trend is particularly relevant in the...

23 Sep 2025

Why a strong CFO is a startup’s secret weapon

I believe that technopreneurs sometimes think the CFO role is just about spreadsheets or making sure the bills get paid. But the truth is, having a properly incentivised, strategic and strong CFO is one of the smartest moves a startup can make—especially when facing high-pressure moments like rais...

20 Aug 2025

How to do a super-fast capital raise

Capital raise headlines often leave us with the impression that it must have been quick and easy, but these overnight successes were probably 6-12 months in the making. We did once do a transaction in 6 weeks, “from handshake to close”. Here are our tips for a sub-6-month raise in the ...

16 Aug 2025

Artificial SuperIntelligence (ASI) and the future of humanity. Subjugation or super-powered?

Will Artificial SuperIntelligence (ASI) subjugate or superpower humans? The recent books, Yuval Noah Harari’s Nexus and Ray Kurzweil’s The Singularity is Nearer, provide very different visions on our human future, one that will play out in most of our lifetimes. The Nexus thesis Harari l...

16 Apr 2025

Technopreneurs may soon have a better route to liquidity

The secondary sale of shares is gaining in popularity but has challenges, although that has not inhibited the emergence of new specialist secondary funds. The proposed new PISCES regulatory framework for trading in private companies in the UK has the potential to address pain points and to democra...