Name: **EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST** - Future Shapers: The Harsh Realities of Growth -
Start: 2026-02-02T18:00:00+00:00
End: 2026-02-02T20:00:00+00:00
Location: Patch Bournemouth

**EXPRESS YOUR INTEREST** - Future Shapers: The Harsh Realities of Growth -

A first-hand account of the critical decisions that make & break a scaling business in a storm of economic and customer uncertainty
About this Event

**TAKING EXPRESSIONS OF INTEREST**

What does it take to run a successful business? How do you cope with the daily pressures and a constantly changing landscape? Certainly, if there’s one thing more stressful than growing a company of 150 people, it’s fighting to sustain it - as people, product, market, financial & investor pressures mount up - and it becomes a race for survival.

We're delighted to introduce Ben Heald - a leading, Bristol, digital entrepreneur - to openly discuss his experiences. As co-founder, CEO and then Chair of Sift, one of Bristol’s longest-standing digital media businesses, Ben has faced forms of this challenge every few years since the company was formed 29 years ago.

Along the way, he’s nurtured and worked closely with his senior team - consistently handing over responsibilities to free up his time to gravite into becoming a director & major shareholder, but that's no easy thing to achieve.

The Harsh Realities

He particularly believes in being transparent and honest about the challenges, blunders and strokes of fortune that are an inevitable part of the entrepreneurial journey.

Silicon South will host a one-to-one chat and Q & A with Ben at Patch. Ben will share some unvarnished truths about his experiences with Sift. He will look at the pivotal choices that helped build up a thriving business and openly share those critical decisions and actions that triggered some extremely damaging outcomes.

Ben will be interviewed by Anthony Story to uncover what did and, vitally, didn’t work.

Please join us for a fascinating evening, some honest insights and some extraordinary, unique lessons – and to find out if the story has a happy ending!

Future Shapers

This interview is the first in a series of events from Silicon South to bring together people who want to shape the future, through innovation, ideas and commercial success, in BCP .

Future Shapers is designed to bring together anyone who wants to improve, learn and do what they can to make their world better to meet others who are driven by the same passion.

The events will be a place to explore a broad canvas of topics - sometimes creative - sometimes tech - and sometimes commercial - but always 100% inspriational.

This is where you will meet your tribe of others who are striving - through what they do and what they believe - to push forward what can and should be done to shape our future.