Hugh is a serial entrepreneur and teacher, he has over 30 years’ experience in international technology companies as corporate leader. Hugh has founded and run 4 startup companies of his own, as a 4x CEO he has raised multiple rounds of investment capital (>$50M in total), grown teams from 1 to over 150 employees, built and sold many successful products (software and semiconductors) and grown revenues from zero to tens of millions of dollars in annual sales.

Hugh’s passion for teaching entrepreneurship to engineering students stems from the lessons he has learnt during his own career, and wish he’d known earlier. Beginning as a software engineering in Silicon Valley in the early 1990’s creating new products, learning about promoting products, and later gaining an understanding of the finance and operational aspects of running companies in the technology industry. Hugh has been through all phases of the technology company lifecycle, from company formation, fund raising, product development, sales and marketing, organization growth through to company acquisition.

Prior to joining Columbia University, Hugh worked at Duke University as Professor of Practice in the Department of Computer Science and taught classes in Mobile Applications Programming, Cybersecurity and Entrepreneurship for Engineers at the undergraduate and graduate level.

Hugh received a BSc in Computer Science from University of Kent at Canterbury, UK in 1987.