Mr Mears started his career working in traditional pure accounting and finance and progressed into various commercial finance management roles. A passionate learner obsessed with accumulating knowledge, he has evolved from accounting into business management, and finally into becoming a passionate serial seed and angel investor.
He has invested as a business angel in more than 20 companies, with a focus in the fields of cutting edge Biotech, Med Devices, Fintech, Technology and Applications with the investee companies located in the UK, France, Sweden, and USA. He is particular passionate about Biotech, particularly stem cell therapy and other areas of healthcare and medicine where he sometimes strays from his usual strict investment rules when he is sees the possible long term benefits to medicine from research that companies may be performing, even if the company he invests in may not be the one who ultimately makes the investors return.

With a pure Mathematics Degree (First Class Honours) gained at the Loughborough University of Technology, he defines himself as a man of data, and mathematics, but also a person that is curious and likes to focus on new adventures, while managing a sensitive balance between financial management, corporate finance and monitoring risk versus reward.

The values of one of the companies he has invested in – Celixir – define well his strategy towards business, investing, and personal drives:

Specialist – dedicated to delivering unique, or specialised products or processes first in specific areas where innovation, or advancement is needed to the benefit of customers of the product;

World-class – collaborate with world leaders in science, medicine, and business, leveraging their expertise to identify how to make unprecedented impact;
Users and business champions – champion users and businesses needs and ensure they are given maximum support both financially and in other areas such as partnerships;

Virtuous – have a track-record of delivering on promises and operating with integrity in all of its business and partner interactions;
Access-driven – a powerful mission to change the lives of potential beneficiaries of the innovation, or product, underpinned by tireless efforts to ensure global access to best research, trials and studies and leading edge partners;

Exceptional – focus in inspiring all employees and partners to reach their full potential and achieve excellence with innovation and value creation;

Reward – understanding that employees, partners and investors need to be rewarded and each may have different motivations and understanding how to ensure stakeholders are driven by their reward to get to the end game

He began his career in the top tier audit and advisory firm Ernst and Young in their Entrepreneurial Services Division based in London qualifying as a UK CPA in 1991. After 7 years with EY, he joined his client Amdocs, an Israeli based provider of CCAB systems to cellular phone companies as Divisional Finance Manager. He went on to join Equant (now Orange Business Services) as part of a M & A team based out of Long Island, USA working on the acquisition of entities in USA, Canada and Mexico from the owner of a global data network SITA, a co-operative owed by the global airlines with a presence in over 200 countries providing data network services to large and small corporates.

During his career with Equant, he moved from M & A, to Divisional Finance based in Amsterdam before finally moving into Commercial Finance involved in cost rationalisation, product pricing and data cleansing projects leading teams based in Madrid, Paris, Bangalore, Sydney, Atlanta, Singapore and London.

He relocated to Asia after his marriage to his Hong Kong Chinese wife. He joined Freyssinet, a subsidiary of VINCI construction. He joined the company in Hong Kong as South East Asia Finance Director, reporting to the CEO, South East Asia and the Group CFO based in Paris. Over this period, he spent time in Thailand, Indonesia, South Korea, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia where he gained considerable experience of working in cross cultures, Asian regulations and was a valued partner of the local Managing Directors whilst protecting the interest of Vinci.

Working with various global companies in several countries and industries led him to develop relationships with different business and economic areas, particularly with organizations based in Europe, Asia and US, both East Coast and West Coast including Silicon Valley.

By building and managing teams and working closely with boards and CEOs in his control or commercial finance roles he has learnt how to leverage a healthy relationship in projects that are impacted by finance, touch systems, require data processing, technology software integration, this has enabled him to identify and more importantly implement financial control.