Can you introduce yourself and your companies background?

I have had a Smörgåsbord career during the last 20 years as a General Counsel and Company Secretary, working for a buffet of different types of companies; start -ups, turnarounds, management owned, private equity backed, AIM, FTSE 250 and FTSE 100. The challenges of each role have been as varied and wide ranging as the types of companies, and as well as my core competencies of law and governance my roles have expanded into operations (onshore and offshore), HR, risk and compliance.

Throughout my career, I have developed a passion for transforming the way governance works for all stakeholders. I have made it my mission to help Company Secretaries and their teams change the way they work, using several layers of knowledge including learnings from my own experiences (both successes and failures). I adapt tools used elsewhere in business to deliver agile transformation and provide solutions to problems many Company Secretaries have faced in supporting boards and businesses.

Kuberno was born out of a frustration around the lack of technology available to support Company Secretaries – particularly when compared to the burgeoning world of legaltech! We launched our entity governance platform, Kube, in May 2021, following 18 months of development. We realised early on in the Kuberno journey that technology can only solve part of the challenge faced by Company Secretaries – it cannot fix outdated processes and ways of working which is why we launched our consultancy arm, the Governance Gym. We use a creative approach in all that we do and have embraced technology to support us during the pandemic, moving all of our consultancy into the virtual world using tools such as Microsoft Teams and Mural.

Our mission is to beat bureaucracy and give governance a good name.

We draw on the deep practical experience we’ve gained working within start-ups and FTSE30 Banks, via the odd IPO, to act as the pilot for Company Secretaries in navigating governance complexity. Our raison d’etre is to deliver transformational governance that supports boards in building agile and sustainable businesses.

​We combine our technical knowledge with a passion for building stakeholder centric processes, alongside robust governance frameworks, that are both key to transforming governance and beating bureaucracy.

What key challenges have you faced?

Juggling everything – and a sense of frustration that we just cannot move any quicker than we are

What key needs do you have as a business owner and as an individual?

There is just SO MUCH TO DO! Running a business is fantastic but not for the faint hearted.

• We have to deliver to our customers – but first we have to find our customers or at least make it easy for them to find us! So we have to think about our online presence through web and social media
• We have to ensure our business is financially sustainable – including managing cashflow, invoicing, paying bills, and setting up payroll, PAYE, and workplace pensions
• We have to have the resource to deliver to our customers as we need to onboard employees and consultants, and ensure compliance with tax and employee legislation.
• We have to onboard our customers which includes a raft of documentation such as NDAs, RFIs, RFPs, proposals, service agreements and licencing agreements
• And we have to protect the business so we need to create policies, procedures, ISO certification, IP registration and more… all these things take a lot of time!
• And of course we also have to focus on our STRATEGY!

How has Farillio helped you on your journey?

Farillio has been invaluable.

I have used Farillio’s template documents including NDAs (Single and Mutual), Consultancy Agreements, Employment Agreements, Employee Handbook builder (brilliant!) and other policies and procedures to set up the company to be compliant, yet efficient. The out of the box templates are good – but I also really appreciate that I can tailor them to my specific needs.

I love the simplicity of sending out the NDA’s and other documents for e-signature.

I have also used the phone and advisor facility to give us some basic advice on next steps in our trademark registration. It was very simple to set up and communication was good. I had a little blip when using the system, but the support I got from the Farillio team in resolving the issue (something to do with cached cookies on my laptop!) was spot on.

We went through our ISO 27001 and 9001 certifications recently which was fairly painless as we had most of the policies in place through the Employee Handbook and other Farillio policies. The consultants we used to help with the process were very complimentary of the policies and loved the format.

There is still so much I haven’t tapped into yet on Farillio and in particular I am looking forward to checking out Joshua Bicknell’s strategy stuff!