Oxford

WORKING FOR YOURSELF
DR. PAUL DARE
CEO – Spatial Scientific
Pty. Ltd.
Paul studied Physics at
Wadham College, 1991.
WHAT: My company, Spatial Scientific,
was established in 2005 as a vehicle
for taking cutting edge spatial
technologies from the academic sector
and turning them into commercially
viable products and services. The
company is going strong, developing
new technologies to support airborne
data acquisition. Currently our main product
line of airborne camera systems are sold
worldwide.
I am a physicist and engineer by training,
completing a PhD in remote sensing at
UCL after my time at Oxford. I am not a
financier or venture capitalist, so I am not
commercialising other people’s ideas.
Instead I am taking my own ideas that I
developed during my time as a university
researcher, and slowly turning them into
commercial products.
EARLY CAREER: The field of my research
and development has been fairly consistent
since graduating from Oxford: remote
sensing and image processing. I began my
research in satellite imaging, developing
new algorithms for merging data from
different spaceborne sensors. After a few
years I transitioned into airborne remote
sensing, mainly because of my passion for
aviation - this gave me an excellent excuse
ALUMNI PROFILES
to obtain my commercial pilot’s licence
(in 2003).
SETTING UP THE COMPANY: Although
my university days gave me an
excellent grounding in my chosen area
of interest, I think I always knew that
an academic career wasn’t for me.
My driving force has always been to
see high quality research being put to
good use.
After a couple of years of university
research in Adelaide, I decided it was
time to “go it alone”: 10 years ago I
risked everything and established
my own company. I did this with no
partners and no financial backing – the
business has been “bootstrapped” all
the way. This has both advantages
(complete freedom to do what I want)
and disadvantages (never enough
finance to develop new projects).
WORKING FOR YOURSELF
ALUMNI PROFILES
ADITYA KASLIWAL
Founder – SpeakSet: Healthcare
Communications Company
WHAT: My role has varied over the
last 2+ years that we’ve been running
SpeakSet. In a startup, your advantage
is agility. That means you have to get
stuck in with whatever needs doing
whether that’s soldering up prototypes
or designing and building a video
calling platform.
Right now, I’m essentially answering
one question. ‘How do you do
repeatable, predictable healthcare
enterprise sales?’ That’s everything
from closing deals and building sales
processes to hiring incredible people to
achieve it.
WHY: You are ALWAYS learning and
learning fast. I have quite a technical
background but my current role
couldn’t be further away from it. I love
that challenge! There’s also some fun
perks like being invited by Google
to speak in Brussels, regular visits to
House of Lords or filming on the 39th
Floor of 1 Canada Square.
A minor caveat though; it’s constantly
intense – hard work both physically and
emotionally – and you have to make do
with what you’ve got. For example, for the
first year, I’d come down to London and
couch surf – I wouldn’t recommend that!
EARLY CAREER: I joined Entrepreneur First -
EF - straight out of Uni. EF brings exceptional
talent together and gives them the tools to
start their own company and has a fantastic
track record, helping to launch 20 startups
in its first 3 years.
What was great about EF was that we had
the space to try out different ideas. Before
SpeakSet, I built guitar pedals and ran a
food business for 4 months – I learned a
lot I could put to good use in what I love;
technology with impact.
TOP TIP:
Passion! You have to be genuinely
passionate about the job and the company
you’re applying to. It makes a huge
difference. Our hiring decisions are made
primarily on passion, hunger and team fit.
Aditya studied Engineering
Science at Mansfield College,
2012.
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