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Three markets have shaped how I work: property, private capital and regulated digital assets. What connects them is friction — the layers of intermediation that quietly decide who gets access to a market and who pays for the privilege. Almost everything I have built has been an attempt to engineer that friction out.

Real estate

I have worked the full length of the property cycle — origination, brokerage, transaction, valuation and the unglamorous business of keeping an asset in good order. I co-founded Starling Properties, built it into a recognised name in Dubai’s prime market and guided it through to acquisition by a Middle Eastern conglomerate. With Dubai Fast Sell I moved to the other side of the transaction, building instant, data-backed offers that compress a months-long sales cycle into a single afternoon.

European Technical came from the ownership side. After years running a private residential portfolio across Palm Jumeirah, Bluewaters and JVC, I had a clear view of the gap: no single accountable maintenance provider, and therefore no one to hold to account. So I built one. It is a useful discipline — owning the operating burden teaches you things about a building that no valuation model will.

Investing

I back and build rather than trade. Every venture on this page was founded and operated first-hand, two of them through to exit. That shapes how I read a deal: I underwrite the operating burden alongside the entry price, because the cost of running an asset is where a return is usually won or quietly lost. AdVision Connect is the current expression of that thesis — treating an under-used screen in a rented apartment as a yielding asset rather than a fixture.

Digital assets & DLT regulation

My work in distributed ledger technology began before the frameworks governing it existed. In 2017–18 I advised around the Gibraltar Blockchain Exchange during the rollout of Gibraltar’s DLT Provider framework — among the first purpose-built regulatory regimes anywhere for digital-asset exchanges and token sales. Alongside it I ran Crypto Gazette through the market’s formative years, decoding the technology while most coverage was still either evangelism or dismissal.

The lesson from that period has aged well: the jurisdictions that wrote sensible, enforceable rules early are the ones that still have an industry. Regulation was never the obstacle to this technology — ambiguity was.

My connection to Dubai runs deeper than business. My grandfather, the British industrialist Jim McCaughey, sold his Gainsborough Stud bloodlines to Sheikh Maktoum bin Rashid Al Maktoum in 1981 — a handshake that helped lay the foundation for Dubai’s modern racing dynasty. Decades later I now live and build here, watching those bloodlines run on at Meydan.

I’m available for media appearances and enjoy networking with other global business professionals who share similar interests. Let’s connect.