Mark Payton co-founded Mercia Asset Management in 2010 with just two other members of staff.
The company, based in Henley-in-Arden, has since enjoyed more than a decade of growth, offering financial services and investments in fields such as technology and healthcare.
In the latest instalment of our How I Made It series, the 54-year-old says he will use Mercia's second decade in business to focus on diversity and the quest to achieve net zero, for both itself and its clients.
What is Mercia Asset Management and how did it first start?
We're one of the UK's most-active regional investors, supporting businesses and entrepreneurs across the country with capital and hands-on support, from finance seed to growth.
The company was founded in 2010 with three employees and £12 million in assets under management and has since grown to 120 staff and £948 million under management.
Our private equity and debt teams focus on backing profitable businesses while our regional venture and Enterprise Investment Scheme capital provides seed funding to start-up and scale-up companies.
We predominantly focus on technology-enabling sectors including life sciences, digital entertainment and software. Together, we call this our 'Complete Connected Capital'.
What was your 'eureka moment' when you realised you had a good business?
We set up Mercia because, at the time, nearly 80 per cent of high-growth businesses were based outside of London, yet these regional SMEs were being underserved, receiving less than 30 per cent of all equity financing in the UK.
This funding gap needed to be addressed and we saw the opportunity for Mercia to do this. Today, we have over 400 companies in our portfolios.
Seeing the success of these businesses that we have supported since inception is a genuine privilege.
With the beauty of hindsight, what would you tell your younger self when you were starting out?
Think better rather than bigger. To get there, do not underestimate the value of experienced people and high-performing teams.
We spent the first few years before our 2014 initial public offering in a vacuum of guidance, challenge and counsel.
My advice to my younger self would be to surround yourself with people considerably better than you, create a diversified board that will challenge, stretch and support and work hard to build talented, efficient teams that can work with autonomy.
What does the future hold?
We've always had responsible investment at our heart and a key focus now is on greater diversity and inclusion, plus further progress on our own road to net zero - these are areas our leadership team is paying a lot of attention to.
As part of this, we are also working with our investees to achieve the same in their businesses. Financially, we are performing well and this is set to continue.
If you weren't running Mercia, what would you be doing?
After my initial career in academia, I was fortunate to work in a number of small businesses, including two start-ups. If it wasn't Mercia, I would be looking at something where the perceived service was dysfunctional.
There exists strong information asymmetry between customer and service provider, where one could build a team to help disrupt the status quo and ultimately help disadvantaged businesses unlock value and achieve their true potential.
I am sure we can all think of a number of sectors that this could apply to.
Who is your role model in business?
I have a few.
Edith Sim - a remarkable, driven woman who demonstrated to me while at the University of Oxford that "hard work can be both rewarding and rewarded".
Tim Cook - in the tech transfer department of the University of Oxford who taught me that "the trenches were no place to learn how to use a rifle".
And, of course, my ultimate role model is my father who, from an early age, taught me to ensure I "pick the fights that I can win".
Which business or business person is getting you excited at the moment?
Cyber security and the role of artificial intelligence in its evolution is really exciting. With an exponential shift to digital, greatly accelerated by the pandemic, cyber security is of significant importance to us all.
Intechnica Group via its Netacea subsidiary has built some amazing technology in this sector and we are very optimistic about its future prospects.
Finally, which business idea do you wish you had had?
Recombinant DNA technology (the joining together of DNA molecules from two different species). I became a diabetic as a teenager in 1983 and had to start injecting purified pig insulin twice a day.
By the mid-1980s, the first ever recombinant technology to be used in humans was introduced - recombinant human insulin. This transformed the way diabetes was managed.
There are many life-changing therapeutics that a number of us will have benefitted from - for instance, the treatment of certain cancers with monoclonal antibodies or, more recently, most covid vaccines.
All are based on recombinant technology - amazing.
