Martin Frost: Embracing Uncertainty & Managing Risk - Entrepreneurs

Ascend Men

Martin Frost CBE is a businessman and entrepreneur responsible for the start-up and scale-up of several highly successful global technology businesses.

Graduating from Cambridge reading History he returned to Manchester and qualified as an accountant working with broad based engineering firms. Joining the environmental services side of Simon Engineering he spent time in France and the USA where he learned to write software and more importantly where his daughter Hannah was born.

He is a cofounder of CMR Surgical, one of the UK’s leading medical devices startups, developing the next generation system for robotically-assisted minimal access surgery where he raised over £250M for the company's development. He was known for putting the Frosty into Frost by walking round the office in a snowman outfit at Christmas and biking to various offices across Cambridge come rain or shine.

Prior to CMR, Martin was CEO and CFO of Sagentia plc. Under his leadership Sagentia, developed and rolled-out M-Pesa, the leading mobile-money platform in the world. He cofounded Redcloud which now manages this technology.

For all of this Martin won the Disruptor Award in the EY Entrepreneur Of The Year™️ 2019 UK Awards.

Since leaving CMR Martin has engaged in starting and scaling-up companies within the spectrum of fast-charge batteries, electric motors, digital pathology, and sensors. He was awarded a CBE in the 2020 Queen's Birthday Honours for Services to Robotics and British Industry.

In his "spare time", Martin is a trustee of Peek Vision whose mission is vision and eye health for all and with wife Ali previously belonged to the C3 Cambridge family where Martin served as a trustee and as a youth leader.

A few noteworthy quotes from Martin:

"The person who is best at a job today isn’t necessarily the person who is best at the job in a few years time."

"Success comes from being authentic, knowing yourself and being prepared to be challenged (don’t surround yourself with people who are as bonkers as you are)"

"CMR will give birth to people who will go and do something else; very special." - Come back in 3 weeks time to hear one of them.

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