Christopher Blake – the relevant career highlights:
A successful business manager – managing director of publishing companies for Reed Elsevier, Thomson, and Wolters Kluwer
A successful dot com entrepreneur – still an investor and director of the internet business established in 1998 (www.babyworld.com).
A founding investment director for a listed venture capital firm (Inflexion plc)
A successful private investor and experienced non-executive director
A popular lecturer – an associate lecturer at Oxford Brookes Management School, and an Associate at the Oxford Brookes Enterprise Centre
A poker player since his teens
Unusually, Chris has experience of taking business decisions from all sides – as a business manager, an entrepreneur, an institutional investor, and as a private investor - and has stacked up a host of anecdotes from each world.
The ideas behind the book have been developed from a series of talks he has given to business managers on decision making, investing, and poker over the past five years. Delegate feedback from a recent course included the following: “Dynamic and enjoyable”; “Challenging and stimulating”; “Very useful, particularly good for taking back to day-to-day job and decision making”; “Inspiring and thoughtful”; “Brilliant. Clear message, very good examples…”