Feature
Left to right Patrick, Michaela and Fred
Rising
stars
In a new quarterly series, Steve
Monnington of Mayfield Merger
Strategies showcases young
talent who have created their own
fast growth events businesses.
First up... Maddox Events,
organiser of Women of Silicon
Roundabout and other diversity
events
Revenue per annum
2016
3 Events
£450k
2018
13 Events
£4.5m
48 — March
2017
6 Events
£1.3m
2019
25 Events
£12.5m
(expected)
M
addox Events started life in
September 2015, with three
laptops in a single room office in South
West London together with £15,000
of working capital. Around the table
were Michaela Jeffery-Morrison and
brothers Patrick and Frederick Lewis.
Michaela and Patrick, who were 25 and
27 respectively, had worked together at
The Innovation Enterprise, an organiser
of strategy summits around the world.
Patrick had moved on to join Clarion to
run tech events while Fred, 25, had just
finished university.
Michaela was the catalyst.
“I had seen the power of events from
organising multiple conferences but, as
a middle manager, I didn’t have my own
voice in terms of the potential direction
that the events could take,” she says.
“I’m deeply passionate about diversity,
empowerment and inclusion but at that
time the whole ‘Women in-’ movement
was in its infancy and there wasn’t an
event that targeted women and created
content for them. I decided that the only
way that this would happen was if I did
it myself.”
Michaela called up Patrick and Fred
and Maddox Events was born. There
seemed to be no sense of risk in the
decision to set out on their own.
“We were using our existing skill sets
and doing exactly what we’d done before
for other people, so we were confident,”
explains Michaela. “If you can create an
event that will positively impact people,
they will keep coming back and you’ll
build up that community.”
Having searched around for
competitors and found none, Patrick
was very sure that their events would be
successful.
“The events that we had run in our
previous companies were very male
and Caucasian dominated, and we also
saw technology as the most important
industry going forward so we took our
opportunity,” he comments. “We were
fearless and also agile in our decision-
making and if we failed we’d fail quickly,
learn from it and move onto something
that we knew would work.”
How does the decision-making
work with a team of three? Patrick
explains: “Michaela is more risk
averse than I am but we each have an
opinion and we debate the issues and
go with the majority so it’s often about
compromise.”
Fred adds: “Because I’m not from the
industry I question everything that the
other two want to do and that provides a
good balance.”
The first event
Michaela describes their first year.
“There were a number of events that
we wanted to trial and through research,
market testing and looking at content it
became clear that our passion lay with