Meet the Mahout™ team
Mahout™ was set up by Pembridge Partners LLP with financial support from the One NorthEast Design and Creative Fund. Free access to the basic level service is supported by NESTA. From day to day it is run by a team including:
Mark Fenwick - Managing Director
Mark has been involved in starting business since he first left university. He focussed on the area of design. It wasn’t until his late thirties that he decided to see what it was like being an employee. He worked in the public sector on developing a national graduate enterprise programme for NESTA, before leaving and establishing an investment fund for commercial creative companies for ONE North East.
His experience of starting small businesses, and assessing creative companies for investment has come together to drive the development of Mahout.
Rebecca Watson - Operations
Rebecca's background is in magazine publishing where she managed production of three of the UK’s biggest weekly IT titles for seven years. Prior to her publishing career Rebecca managed a London graphic design agency where she gained hands on experience of running a small creative company.
David Prais - Chairman
David's management experience lies in building fast-growing companies and aligning strategy and business plans having been in strategic planning for Gateway and Dell. He works with TV companies and advertising agencies delivering the action plans from strategy to execution.
David Prais is a non-executive director on a number of company boards, including Bellacor.com Inc, Investment Sciences, SML Wholesale Finance, Films of Record and Windfall Films. He heads up the business strategy and planning at Pembridge’s private sector clients. He is specialised in supporting creative firms to achieve commercial success, profitability and shareholder value through specific guidance.
Hugh Mason - Director
Hugh Mason co-founded Pembridge Partners LLP, a London-based business accelerator, in 2001. Acting as its first Managing Partner, Hugh coordinated the team that led to Pembridge raising, or directly investing, more than US $50 million in innovative marketing, media and technology businesses, and providing advice helping to build value in over 2,000 Small- to Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs) in the UK, Singapore and Netherlands.
The sobering experience of investing his own wealth in other peoples' businesses has given Hugh a vivid picture of the issues surrounding growth in sub-sectors as diverse as Design, Music, Television, Film, Animation, Games, Public Relations, Advertising, Direct Marketing and Sales Promotion.
Pembridge's expertise centres on developing high-growth Media, Marketing and Technology SMEs. This has led numerous public sector agencies around the world to hire Hugh on a consulting basis, where they desire Creative Industries to act as a spur for economic growth and regeneration. Hugh provides support to national government departments in the UK and Singapore, Regional Development Agencies across the UK, NESTA and many others.