DAVID REYNOLDS · DIGITAL VALUE CREATOR

Digital that shows up in the valuation.

Most digital investment never reaches the valuation. Knowing what to build is the hard part. I have spent twenty years on that problem inside PE-backed and B2B businesses, building rather than advising.

Track record Get in touch

NOW · AI, AND WHAT A BUSINESS IS WORTH · WHEN THE WORK GETS CHEAP →

Built and led digital atOASIS GROUPALEXANDER MANNGRANT THORNTONRELX / REED BUSINESS INFORMATIONTOTALJOBS GROUP

The gap

Most organisations don't have a technology problem. They have a value creation problem.

Technology is an input. Value comes from better commercial decisions, better products, better operating models and better execution. Digital makes those possible. It doesn't replace them.

The conversation around digital and AI is well ahead of the reality. Most of the work is still structural: product, operating model, commercial alignment, execution. That's where outcomes are decided.

Technology is easy to buy. Enterprise value is much harder to create. My work sits in the gap between the two.

ON AI AND THE FUTURE OF WORK · AI.VALUECREATOR.IO

AI, and what a business is worth.

I've worked with the machinery underneath AI for most of my career: parsing and extraction, anomaly detection, natural-language generation, screening for fraud, long before any of it was called AI. I think about it the way a product person does: start with the job, decide what to build, what to buy and what only you can own, and measure what reaches the accounts.

Where I've landed is simple to say. When doing the work gets cheap, a business is worth its judgement: people who know what good looks like, a written record of it, and a way of producing more people who know. I'm optimistic about AI, in start-ups, corporates and portfolio companies alike. The businesses that come out ahead will keep all three while the work changes.

Which of your work is the bottom of the pyramid, what does it cost, and what did it teach?
Who decides what good looks like once the machines are doing the work, and is it written down?
Where will your next generation of experienced people come from?

Read my thinking on AI →Start with When the work gets cheap · 10 min →

Chart: reported margin rises the year junior work is automated, while experienced people fall away years later; for the first four years the damage is invisible.

The cost that's easy to miss · from When the work gets cheap

Track record

Twenty years in that gap.

INTERNAL FUNCTION TO GROWTH ENGINE

OASIS Group

Turned digital into a revenue line.

Group Chief Digital and Product Officer at an international information-management business, with a specific brief: work out what the digital version of the company should look like, and build it. We turned FileSmart and Keeper from something built for a single customer into a repeatable product for regulated organisations, moved AI beyond experimentation and into real client workflows, and built a dedicated digital growth function around it. Digital went from an internal function to a commercial growth engine.

PLATFORM FROM INCUBATION TO LAUNCH

Alexander Mann Solutions

Took AMS One from idea to the centre of the proposition.

Inside a PE-backed global talent business, I led product, platform and digital strategy and took a proprietary platform, AMS One, from idea to launch and into the centre of the company's core proposition, opening a recurring digital revenue line in a business built on services. I owned the roadmap and the investment decisions behind it. The engineering was never the hard part. The hard part was changing how the business sold, operated and made decisions around it.

START-UPS, MENTORING AND CO-CREATION

SEED VC · Tynton Group

Co-founded a pre-accelerator and built with founders.

Two years working across the venture and early-stage ecosystem. I co-founded a pre-accelerator programme, mentored founders through build and go-to-market, and sat on the other side of the table as an innovation and venture director. Alongside it, emerging-technology work with corporates, including digital twins on an industrial estate and an aviation technology lab that brought major international airports around one table. Co-creation rather than consultancy: in the room, building the thing, and still mentoring founders now.

VENTURES INSIDE AN ESTABLISHED FIRM

Grant Thornton

Ran a digital P&L and built a venturing capability.

I owned the digital P&L at a professional-services firm and built new products and a corporate-venturing capability from scratch. Some worked. Some didn't. The ones that worked had one thing in common: someone owned the commercial outcome, and the incentives changed around them.

PUBLISHER TO DATA BUSINESS

RELX / Reed Business Information

Helped turn a publisher into a data business.

Seven years helping turn a traditional publisher into a data and analytics business. I led product and innovation work across a global portfolio: an acquisition that became a new market-data product, automation across the portfolio, and some of the group's earliest commercial uses of AI and natural-language generation.

START-UP TO EXIT

Totaljobs Group

From £200k to over £20m, and an exit to Axel Springer.

I joined early and stayed through the whole arc, from around £200k of revenue to more than £20m, and an exit to Axel Springer. I led digital strategy and audience growth across the portfolio, and built the R&D capability that expanded it.

Notes

Thinking in public.

Occasional pieces on the distance between what technology can do and what a business is worth. Written by me, from work I've done, and revised when I change my mind. Some go back a few years and are kept as they were.

Sept 2026

Five questions I ask before any digital investment

4 min read

Every piece of work starts with the same five questions. They sound simple. Most organisations can't answer them, and the ones that can tend to fund the right things.

Sept 2026

Twenty years of being early

6 min read

Predicting the technology is the easy part. Predicting the lag is where I have spent most of my career. For the first time in twenty years, I am not confident I know how long that lag is any more.

Jul 2026

Technology was never the constraint. Now it really isn't.

5 min read

Most ideas never fail; they just cost too much to try. AI has collapsed the cost of finding out whether an idea works, and the constraint has moved to imagination, judgement and execution.

All notes →

About

Built things all the way through.

I started as a software developer at Essex County Council and have built things all the way through since: products, platforms, teams, ventures.

I've worked across start-ups, FTSE 100 groups, PE-backed businesses and global firms. I co-founded a pre-accelerator and still mentor founders through build and go-to-market. And I'm restoring an old boat.

Start a conversation.

I'm always interested in talking to people working on the same problems: operators, investors, founders. If something here lands, or you think I've got it wrong, get in touch.

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