Jack Parsons, Chief Executive Officer of purposeful start up awarded Young Digital Leader 2017 by Digital Leaders 100
My name is Jack Parsons, CEO of yourfeed, I have been lucky enough to be awarded the Young Digital Leader of the Year award at a ceremony in London’s St Pancras Renaissance Hotel by Digital Leaders 100.
I loved being invited to speak at the National Digital Conference on the day of the awards. I wanted to get across how the education system had let me down and how anything was possible if you work hard enough, no matter what start you were handed in life. From my hard work I have built a platform with the aim of connecting 2 million young people to opportunities by 2020, where their talents may not have been realised. I was so happy at how well my speech went down with the digital leaders in attendance. It was my honest, passionate drive which they appreciated the most.
I received so many kind messages from the attendees who took the time to listen to what I had to say:
The judging panel was made up of esteemed digital veterans including Maggie Philbin from TeenTech, Accenture’s Emma McGuigan, Chris Yiu from Uber and Jacqueline de Rojas from techUK. The winners were selected from a 50% public vote and 50% judges vote.
I founded yourfeed with a mission to connect two million young people to opportunities by 2020. I already have 2.7m monthly organic impressions across the social channels and have built a personal brand that is strong and impactful which is shared with young people across the UK. One of my strongest beliefs is that people invest in personality, to be the best you can be and to show that to businesses is crucial of making a success out of yourself. I started out with £20,000 in my bedroom two years ago and have built my business to a market value £8 million. I am lucky to be able to include these individuals in yourfeed’s advisory board: Ruth Gilbert, CEO Career College Trust; Rakesh Bhasin, Former Group CEO of Colt Technology, and John Souter, CEO of London Internet Exchange.
Maggie Philbin OBE, CEO of TeenTech, “Huge congratulations to Jack for a very well deserved win. Everyone in that room thought very hard about the way talent, like Jack’s, so often gets completely missed. I’m very excited to see Jack’s journey so far and look forward to following all our young leader finalists future achievements.”
Just wow! I’m very humbled to win. They say all great things come in threes. So I want to say thanks to all you for being part of my journey so far (Haydon Godbeer, my Chief Product Officer; Taelon Vorster, Chief Marketing Officer & Todd Mansill, Chief Technology Officer), to everyone for voting me as your Young Digital Leader of the Year and most importantly to my fellow young digital leaders because in my eyes we are all winners.
Some more lovely messages from the audience of the DL100:
