Elliot Moss
Good morning, welcome to Jazz Shapers. It’s where we bring you the entrepreneurs shaping the world of business together with the musicians, shaping the worlds of Jazz, Soul and Blues. I am very pleased to say that my guest today is Tom Ilube, Founder and CEO of Crossword Cybersecurity Technology, a company researching industry needs and commercialising cybersecurity technology. Spending his early years in London, Uganda and Nigeria, Tom says, “As a mixed race person, I was viewed as an outsider both in Nigeria and in the UK. I think that made me build up my own confidence in who I am and take on responsibility for how I feel.” Having absorbed some of Nigeria’s ambitious ‘You can try anything’ mindset at the University of Benin, he moved to London building a successful corporate career with roles at Goldman Sachs, The London Stock Exchange and others before leaving to, as he says, “Go entrepreneurial. I figure that if I am going to work this hard” he said, “I might as well do it for myself.” Tom established several start up technology businesses focussing on information security and educational initiatives before founding Crossword Cybersecurity in 2014. His aim, to turn cutting edge ideas in cybersecurity research into products. It’s really nice to have you here.
Tom Ilube
Thank you.
Elliot Moss
Now, I read lots of research about all my guests and when I read the piece of paper that says so Tom studied, I think it was, physics…
Tom Ilube
Yep.
Elliot Moss
…I am always nervous because that means you are really clever. Tell me a little bit about the scientist in you and then I want to talk about business. Are you at heart the person that wants to understand why it is the way it is and what’s working and what’s not working in a very methodical almost precise way? Is that you? Is that what defines you in reality, beyond everything else?
Tom Ilube
Well I’m a failed physicist so I did physics but what I learnt quite early on at University was that there were people who were so much cleverer than me in that almost instantly I realised I wasn’t going to be the theoretical research physicist that I thought I was going to be. I was, I was clever enough to be in the room but not clever enough to do it for a living which momentarily was a disappointment but then it was sort of a source of fascination, I used to spend time with these immensely clever people and almost like you look at a magician and think how do you do that and I used to look at them and think ‘gosh, that’s amazing’ and I suppose that’s become part of the way that I do what I do, I try and collect really clever people and look at them with amazement. I think what I am doing as a scientist, it’s not so much the methodical, it’s the inquisitive, it’s sort of the ‘how does that work’ and ‘isn’t that interesting’, you know I like coming across things that I think ‘gosh isn’t that interesting’ and I like trying to understand them to an extent that I really understand them, it’s not that I can just explain them it’s sort of in my bones and I think, you know, quantum theory, what’s that about and then I get to a point where I think, actually you know what I am getting a sense of what that’s about, how fascinating, so I think I find life fascinating.
Elliot Moss
And in terms of finding life fascinating, let’s start at the end and then work backwards. Just very briefly, in your own words, I described your business now which I think went on the AIM market, an IPO back in 2018. Just tell me a little bit about, to the layman, and that’s me and probably most people listening, exactly what it does.
Tom Ilube
We are in what’s sometimes called a tech transfer business so we transfer ideas and technology out of Universities into the commercial world. We specifically focus on cybersecurity, intellectual property and technology, we talk to loads of Universities, find out where the interesting work is going on, identify something that we think is really interesting, clever, breakthrough and then we agree with the University that they’ll let us use that intellectual property in order to create a product and take the product to market.
Elliot Moss
Being inquisitive then, quite important?
Tom Ilube
Absolutely.
Elliot Moss
And therefore assembling a team of people right from the get go that are inquisitive, critical?
Tom Ilube
Yeah, absolutely.
Elliot Moss
And it sounds like that’s the overriding piece beyond delivery, beyond relationships, beyond packaging up product, understanding the technology actually but hold on a minute, what does that really, what could that do?
Tom Ilube
Yes, what could that do and who is doing it? And, you know, people have to be interesting to me as well. At the core of what I do is, am I working with fascinating people? Are they people that I just find really interesting to spend time with and are there dimensions to them outside of their work life that’s fascinating and interesting as well, it’s just a more interesting way to live your life.
Elliot Moss
And in terms of those dynamics, are you quite agnostic about what interesting could mean?
Tom Ilube
Yes, absolutely. So, you know, my range of interests are, you know, a thousand piece, or three thousand piece at the moment, puzzles, to Tai Chi, to physics. For my honeymoon, I was given permission to organise my honeymoon and so I arranged for us to go a mathematical institute in New Mexico which was a bit of a surprise both to my wife and to the mathematical institute in New Mexico but…
Elliot Moss
Completely normal behaviour here. You’re listening to me, Elliot Moss, talking to Tom Ilube who is absolutely average in every single way and if you think of doing that on your honeymoon, make sure you’ve got the right other half is all I would say on that note. You’re still married?
Tom Ilube
We are.
Elliot Moss
Fascinating people you talked about and you needing to feel fascinated. Tell me a little bit about what you found fascinating about the banking world. You worked at Egg, you helped Egg launch in fact and it was one of my first cards I think I had way back in the early 2000s. You were at Goldman Sachs, quite a well-known investment bank. For most people looking from the outside in on the finance world it’s not interesting, it’s pretty heavy, it’s pretty… soulless is a hard word but it can look like it’s a little bit inhuman and yet here you are saying you find people fascinating, things fascinating so just help me understand that a little bit.
Tom Ilube
So, early on in my career when I came back from Nigeria having grown up here, gone to Nigeria, come back again, I wanted to build a career and there was an element of me that wanted to prove that I was good enough and that’s probably a theme that runs through my life and who I am and the way I was proving that I was good enough was by trying to work for these very impressive companies to see whether they would accept me and then if they did accept me to see whether I was good enough to be there and so Goldman Sachs was sort of on that journey if you like at a point in my career, I had been working at Price Waterhouse Coopers, PWC, for a number of years as a Management Consultant, I had the opportunity to apply for a job at Goldman’s, I had the obligatory sixteen interviews spread out over three months in multiple different countries where any person at any point can say no this isn’t a Goldman’s person but at the end of it they said yes, come on board, and I thought I would be there for the rest of my career, and I really enjoyed my time there but actually I only ended up staying there for about two years and then I went down the entrepreneurial path. So I think what was going on there was me sort of pushing myself into situations where I was sort of testing and saying “Tom are you good enough to do this? Would they actually accept you? Would they accept someone like you with your background? Gosh, they have. Are you good enough now to play at that level? Ah, you are.” And after a couple of years of that I sort of thought this is interesting, I don’t think there’s a better firm, you know, arguably but it’s, you know, definitely one of the, if not the top firm in banking so, there’s no other firm I am going to go and test myself at so I’m sort of free now, I can do what I like and so I thought right, now I’ll be an entrepreneur so off I went to do that.
Elliot Moss
And the proving you were good enough was for yourself as you looked in the mirror? For your family? For those people in those businesses? Who do you think it was really for?
Tom Ilube
I think it was really for myself. It was… yeah, nobody else either cared or thought that I needed to do that, you know, if I had said to wife or family, you know, I am doing this because I am proving I am good enough, they’d sort of say, “you don’t need to do that” but internally there was this sort of ‘I’m not sure, I’m not sure’ and that is a constant driver for me, you know, every time I achieve something then I sort of think ‘Ooh was that a fluke?’ you know, I get awarded a CBE, mmm but, do they, you know, or you know they say “Right Tom, you’re the most influential black person in the UK”, ah but maybe they were just short of black people that year and…
Elliot Moss
And what’s that about Tom? Because obviously, you know, you set up a number of businesses, you are super successful on anyone’s metrics of what makes a good, not just financially but the non-financial, the charitable piece which we’ll come onto and there you are on a number of fronts questioning that. Is that just because it’s got nothing to do with your background as it were, nothing to do with the colour of your skin, it’s just who you are or is it the combination of all those things? That’s the bit I’m… because I mean, anyone looking from the outside in, and of course it’s easier when I am not you, you’re you, you go Tom, you’re crazy, of course you’re successful.
Tom Ilube
I think… I don’t know, it’s difficult to know, I’m sure it’s to do with the background in some way. I moved around a lot so, you know, I went to a lot of different schools, first few years in Sunbury in south west London, then a few years in Uganda and then back to Richmond and then to Nigeria and then back to the UK and so I was a person that, you know, I never started and finished the same school apart from University, I joined a school and then I left halfway through and joined another school and then joined another school and so forth so I was constantly the new boy and maybe you get good at being the new boy because when you are the new boy you have to suss things out and figure out how to fit in and, you know, be interesting enough but not too interesting otherwise you might attract the bullies but you don’t want to be the boring kid in the corner and then you find your feet and then you are off again and so forth. So, I think maybe there’s an element of that that each time I am thinking right I’m the new boy again and I’ve got to prove myself all over again. You know, when start companies, I always start, I’m an early stage guy so I start with a blank sheet of paper and I go into an office with a flipchart and a pen and I say, ‘right now I’ve got to do it again, maybe last time was a fluke, let’s see’ and then off we go again and then when we get to the end of that one I think, ‘yeah but, maybe I should just do it again just to make sure’.
Elliot Moss
It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Tom Ilube
Quite tiring actually.
Elliot Moss
I bet it is. Stay with me for much more from my guest, seems to have been very fluky on many, many, many occasions repeatedly, it’s Tom Ilube, he’ll be back with me in a couple of minutes. Right now we are going to hear a taster from the Mishcon Academy Digital Sessions, they can be found on all of the major podcast platforms. Mishcon de Reya’s Joe Hancock and Katy Ling talk about current trends in cyber fraud and what companies need to do to protect themselves against them during the recovery period.
You can enjoy all our former Jazz Shapers and hear this very programme again by popping Jazz Shapers into your podcast platform of choice or you can ask Alexa to play Jazz Shapers and many of our recent programmes await you there. But back to today, it’s Tom Ilube, he’s my guest, Founder and CEO of Crossword Cybersecurity, a tech company specialising in cybersecurity and risk solutions. I love the idea of tech transfer by the way, that notion of working with really clever people and then helping them manage it because we’re talking about clever people not always knowing quite how valuable the thing they’ve created is and then you helping them do that. So, this epiphany of ‘I don’t need the name on the door to tell the world that I’m okay and that I’m good at this stuff’ and you said the entrepreneurial gene was unleashed. You have set up, I mean I am probably going to lose count here, but it’s a good handful of businesses in the IT space, you’ve also set up a number of charities or foundations and you mentioned which I think is quite telling, you know, you finish that one, was that a fluke? You go to the next one, empty board, pen again and off you go. That sense of initial early stage discovery of the first, that idea, how does that make you feel when you go hold on a minute, this business called Noodle – which you created back a while ago – that’s kind of cool. When you find that moment, is the ‘oh god there’s loads of work to do to bring this alive’ or is there a moment when you stop and go, ‘that’s interesting and I’m happy’? Is there a happiness I guess I’m asking?
Tom Ilube
That’s interesting so, the moment is really, really interesting. When I see something and I think that’s what I’m going to do, I get excited by it so I don’t get daunted by the effort involved and because that’s what I do, I paint the picture, I just sort of have a picture of what this thing will be like in four, five, six years’ time and I start to bring that into existence and I quite like it when people doubt that it’s going to happen, you know, with the school in Ghana I say, “right I’m going to create a science and technology school in Ghana” and they say “but you’re not from Ghana and you live in London and how’s that going to happen” and I think to myself, you know, ‘well it's going to happen, you watch’ and then gradually it comes to life and then people say ‘ooh it’s actually happening’. I remember my daughter saying once, she said, “I’ve decided I might sort of listen to some of the things you say because sometimes you say something and then it happens so maybe I’d better keep an eye on what you say” and so I think that goes on. The happiness thing though that’s sort of a different thing, I’m happy at times in the moment but on the whole I’m, there isn’t constant happiness there and…
Elliot Moss
Dissatisfaction I sense. Not unhappiness, it’s just a “I haven’t understood it. I haven’t fixed it. I haven’t spotted the solution. I haven’t gone and delivered.” I am imagining you are always on the spectrum of “It’s not there yet.”
Tom Ilube
I think if I can’t fix something, I feel that very deeply. A lot of things I can fix, you know, in families there are often, you know, the person that you happen to go to, to fix things and I joke that I’m that person and I’m sure they only throw stuff at me so that I’ve got something to do but I am quite good at saying “Right, that problem, and you think that’s a difficult problem, I’m going to fix it” but, you know, when, you know, my older brother had cancer and died and for all my so-called success and contacts and money and this, that and the other, I couldn’t fix it and, you know, that, that was, crushing and I sort of when I looked and thought what’s happening there, you know, apart from losing him and the impact of that, you know, it sort of really kind of just reminded me that this sort of need to be useful and to add value and to fix things, when that just wasn’t possible it really hit me hard.
Elliot Moss
How did you deal with that actually because it’s a really important point about resilience in general and in a left brained rational way I am sure in your business you help people understand how to be resilient when things don’t go well. When it’s emotional, and you just talked very openly about your brother, that trickier.
Tom Ilube
Yeah. I mean for me, for the best part of a year it was crushing so I was probably on the verge of breakdown, you know, almost going in and out of it. I remember saying, I think I said to my wife or to someone, one of my best friends, “I feel like I’m eating dust, you know, I’m eating but everything, life, tastes like dust” for months and months and months and I really wondered how and whether I would get out of it. I think I sort of, now that’s a very extreme situation and I was sort of showing resilience in other ways but in that situation at some point it was almost like I just grabbed the sides and said “I am going to, I’m just going to pull myself out of this”, you know, and I really had to stretch and emotionally stretch up and drag and pull myself out of it until I got my head above water and then started to push on from there and part of it was, you know, my brother Jim he was a really, you know, fabulous, easy-going, super intelligent chap, you know, actually one of the challenges I suppose that I have where I am trying to prove myself is both my brothers, my older brother Jim, my younger brother Roland, intellectually much smarter than I am, you know, just if the three of us are sitting there talking then I am the dullard and they’re… so there was an element where I am trying to keep up with them sort of thing and so he had this sort of intellectual gift and easy going style where if he ever wanted to do something he would just do it, I remember calling him once and saying ‘oh you’re watching the rugby’, I think it was a Lion’s tour, ‘you’re watching the rugby’ and he said ‘yeah, I’m watching the rugby’, I said ‘ah yeah, me too’, I said ‘where are you watching it?’ He said, ‘well, South Africa because that’s where it’s on’, you know, and I thought it was in the pub up the road. That’s the sort of chap he was. So I think he, I kind of almost heard him in the depths of my despair, I almost sort of heard him saying ‘okay come on Tom, you know, time to enjoy life again, just, you know, I would be so you should as well’ and that helped me get out of it.
Elliot Moss
Stay with me for much more from Tom Ilube, my Business Shaper here on Jazz Shapers talking very openly about resilience and about dealing with things that are about as painful as they get. You talked about obstacles and issues and I want to talk about racism. We’ve talked very briefly about the fact that you are black and about the fact that there have been, although I haven’t said it, there have been a number of times in your life where basically because of the colour of your skin, things didn’t quite go the way they ought to have gone. We’re sitting here in 2020 in the year when the Black Lives Matter movement has suddenly become more main stream. Before we watched it, as someone who isn’t black, I’m looking going this is awful, I’m an antiracist as most good-minded people are but this is different. Do you see yourself as a black role model? You talked briefly, you’re a CBE, you’re a person in business, you’re a… you have this foundation that you created, you do great things. Do you do that for any other reason other than the reason before which is Tom Ilube fixes problems? Or is it because Tom Ilube believes that as a black person he ought to be doing these things for the black community?
Tom Ilube
I have got used to being a role model and it’s something that I accept, I don’t sort of look for it actively but I have realised over the years, possibly particularly over the last maybe ten or fifteen years, that some younger people, younger black people and white people and so forth, look to me and some of the things I’ve done and it points a direction or it gives them some inspiration and so forth and so I’ve decided that I’m comfortable with that and… but I don’t let it sort of impact my life, I don’t really then try and tailor myself to make myself more role model-like, I just do what I do and if people take some bits of that and say actually that bit’s useful to me, I think I’ll use that to inspire me to do something then I accept that and I’m comfortable, you know, some people say I’m an executive who just happens to be black and I say, oh right okay, well I’m a black executive, you know, that’s just who I am and I’m just very comfortable with that.
Elliot Moss
The satisfaction that is derived from your working life as you juxtapose that with your philanthropic life, again talking about that happiness thing, is it, are you neutral? Does it matter whether it’s one or the other or does one give you a deeper sense of happiness? A deeper sense of purpose?
Tom Ilube
Yeah, yeah. My charitable work, that is the reason why I do the other stuff. Early on in my career I was running a business, things were quite tough and I talked to my then chairman who was quite a thoughtful chap and I said “gosh this is hard work, you know, I’m struggling a bit” and so forth and he said, “before we talk about the business, let’s just stand back a bit. Tell me, what are you here for, what do you want to do? Ten years out, fifteen years out” and I talked about the impact that I wanted to have on the African continent and the way that I wanted to make things happen and we talked about that for a while and he said, “okay, two things Tom. One, you’ve got to do this day-to-day stuff otherwise you’ll never get to do that so, tough, you’re going have to do that.” I thought ‘oh blimey, okay’, “and two”, he said, “and by the way that big beautiful vision you’ve got there, if you can’t do this stuff, don’t kid yourself you’re ever going be able to do that” so this is sort of small steps but you just get on and do that and it was kind of a wake up call. Okay, so I want to play that big game there, I’m going to have to be able to do this and I sort of rolled up my sleeves and got back into it again so I definitely derive pleasure from the business stuff but the reason why I do it, the money that I make, the contacts that I make, I’m thinking about the impact that I can have over here and when I visit the school and see what the girls have done and are going on to do, that’s the bit where I really think, ‘wow that’s, I’m really pleased about that’.
Elliot Moss
But in that day-to-day stuff obviously there’s serious stuff to do, you’re now, you have a PLC to look after, you’ve probably got three other ideas at any one time, I imagine. How would, and you mentioned, you said of this chairman, a thoughtful person. How would you be described by your team now in this business that you are running? What do you think they would say if they had a couple of adjectives?
Tom Ilube
Mmm, interesting. I think, I think they might say thoughtful as well. I think I’m quite reflective and I think they see that. I think they would also say but sometimes Tom gets very laser-like and suddenly things get done and so they see that as well and I think they hope to be able to just get on and do the things that they need to do before I notice and say actually let me get really laser-like about…
Elliot Moss
So you are a physicist. I knew it. I knew my hunch… Tom, I knew my hunch was right, you put me off, you moved me over there but I knew we’d come back to the laser. Stay with me for my final chat with Tom ‘the Laser’ Ilube plus we’re playing a gem from Muddy Waters, that’s in just a moment, don’t go anywhere.
I have Tom Ilube my Business Shaper just for a few more minutes. We covered a lot, a lot of things have popped out like nice rabbits quite happily from the hat. I want to ask you about the future now, the next few years. You’ve obviously accomplished so much even though you think it’s all a fluke and it’s going to end tomorrow or even today. Is the drive the same? Is the drive I’ve just got to fix it? Is the drive I don’t really care how many titles you throw at me, the fact that you are now an Honorary Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford, the fact that you are an Advisory Fellow of St Anne’s College, Oxford, the fact that you are an Non-Exec Director I think, are you still on this Chair of Diversity and Inclusion Advisory Group?
Tom Ilube
I’m on the Board of the BBC.
Elliot Moss
On the Board of the BBC as you will. Included in, you know, one power list after another, CBEs, everything. Tom, what is going to happen next?
Tom Ilube
I’m going to keep building my business, I’m going to keep building my school. I think I’m going to maybe become more reflective, what I’ve found over the years is that I can achieve a lot in a soft way so my form of exercise is Tai Chi, that’s what I do, I…
Elliot Moss
It’s all the form isn’t it? That’s lovely. Quite flowing.
Tom Ilube
You know quite flowing and it’s about leverage and it’s about using other forces in order to make things happen and so in a way I have become more influential and able to do more things by sort of doing less than I used to, you know, when I was younger I used to rush around and grab things and push things and so forth and now I have sort of eased back a bit but I know where the levers are in order to get things done so I’ll be doing more of that and I’m looking forward to it.
Elliot Moss
And that will give you space for yourself, being reflective is about your time but I imagine also in your responses to people and events.
Tom Ilube
Yeah, yeah. You know, having more time to think, having more time to read, write more maybe, that’s the sort of thing I’ll be doing.
Elliot Moss
And do you envisage a time where you won’t be working and you will be 100% in your philanthropic endeavours or is that… does that peace ground you?
Tom Ilube
I don’t think I’ll stop working. I can’t see that at the moment, I think I’ll continue to work. I don’t quite see it as work, I think that’s the thing, I don’t quite, you know, I enjoy it and so it feels a bit like saying, you know, do you see a time when you will stop eating and I think why would I do that, so that will always be there.
Elliot Moss
And the Board roles are fun?
Tom Ilube
Yes, yeah, they are, they’re fun, they’re interesting, they make you think, you know, when you sit on the board of something like the BBC with nearly 20,000 people and reaching nearly half a billion people worldwide and so forth, you have to really sort of think about so many dimensions and then think about how you can influence decisions where you want to influence decisions. It’s fascinating.
Elliot Moss
That must be a huge game of chess, I mean, just on that one alone, to think in those dimensions, whether as you said, where the stakes are super high and there’s complexity built in. Is it possible as a non-exec in an organisation like that to actually influence?
Tom Ilube
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, and I think I do but you have to learn how to do it and you can’t influence everything and you can’t change everything so you have to look for where the levers are in the organisation and influence those levers and you also have to realise that you might not see the effect immediately and so you have to be patient about it, you’ll try and make something happen over here recognising that the impact you’ll see it a year or two later over there but if you have faith in yourself and in that’s the way things work then you’re quite comfortable with that and I’m quite comfortable with that.
Elliot Moss
It’s been really good talking to you, I’ve really enjoyed it, thank you. And thank you for your openness and honesty, it’s been fascinating. So, The Laser has a choice. What has The Laser Tom chosen in terms of your song choice and why have you chosen it?
Tom Ilube
I’ve chosen Mr Bojangles by Sammy Davis Jr. That is my song, that is the name of my blog, that’s the thing that I want written on my gravestone and there’s a line it where he sings, “talks of life laughed” and I like that, you know, I think about life, I talk about life and I laugh and that’s Mr Bojangles does.
Elliot Moss
The song choice of my incredibly honest Business Shaper, Tom Ilube. He talked about being inquisitive and being fascinated by the world and people. He talked about his laser-like skills of really interrogating issues and problems and getting under the skin of them to resolve them. And importantly as he moves into the next phase of the Tom Ilube life, he talked about the importance of being reflective, of really thinking things through and boy was he honest about everything. Have a great one, I’ll see you on Saturday.