Martin Spiller

Martin is an Associate Professor in Entrepreneurial Practice. He is designing and leading the newly created SME Growth Portfolio at Oxford Brookes Business School, a suite of executive education programmes for founders and owner-managers of growing businesses. The portfolio takes founders through the process of designing and building a plan to help scale their business and achieve their growth or exit ambitions.

Alongside his academic role, Martin is the Managing Partner of Paladin Partners and a founding Partner of Oakmere Partners, where he focusses on advising founders and leadership teams on growth, value creation and exit.  He has worked with hundreds of SMEs as an academic, adviser, executive, investing as an angel or via an early-stage VC and non-executive director, supporting businesses through growth, investment, succession and exit.

Martin has served on more than 25 boards and been involved in raising and deploying over £15 million of investment capital. His experience spans technology, professional services, consumer products, media, social enterprise and high-growth entrepreneurial businesses, giving him a broad perspective on the challenges founders face as their organisations evolve.

A regular speaker, judge and commentator on entrepreneurship and business growth, Martin combines academic research with real-world commercial experience. His work focuses on helping founders build businesses that are more valuable, more resilient and ultimately better aligned with the people building them. Known for challenging conventional business wisdom, his talks blend evidence, practical insight and a healthy dose of commercial reality.