{"id":734,"date":"2021-10-25T14:42:22","date_gmt":"2021-10-25T14:42:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/?p=734"},"modified":"2021-10-25T14:42:22","modified_gmt":"2021-10-25T14:42:22","slug":"engineering-a-career-as-an-investor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/2021\/10\/25\/engineering-a-career-as-an-investor\/","title":{"rendered":"Engineering a career as an investor"},"content":{"rendered":"

Julian Costley's (BSc Engineering 1975) career has taken him around the world, in industries including computing, journalism and broadcasting. He is currently CEO and owner of publishing company Bite-Sized Books. Here, he shares recollections of the early campus music scene, experiences of imposter syndrome and how trees are surprisingly important...<\/strong><\/p>\n

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\u201cI met my first wife in freshers\u2019 week 1971 and we were a very sociable couple. It felt like a world of constant parties. We went to every gig organised by the Students\u2019 Union. It was a real varied mix \u2013 on the one hand we\u2019d get a very young Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music on stage, with Brian Eno doing the lights from the back of the hall, and on the other we\u2019d be subjected to questionable performances such as Adge Cutler & The Wurzels!<\/p>\n

\u201cMy love of bridge in sixth form had played a large part in poor A-level results, so my dream of becoming an architect was dashed. When I was offered a place at Bath to read Mechanical Engineering, I grabbed it. It meant that I could still design things, the syllabus looked interesting and the location was perfect!<\/p>\n

\u201cThe brilliant thing about my degree was how I learned to be super-organised and to keep 100% focus on whatever I do. The final year was as much about leadership and good management as it was about technical skills. Those skills are common to all businesses and have stayed with me.<\/p>\n

A wild ride<\/h3>\n

\u201cMy career since Bath has been an absolute rollercoaster. Back in 1975 there was a recruitment process called \u2018the milk round\u2019 where companies came up to campus to interview final-year students and offer them jobs. I was given a role as a graduate trainee with International Computers Limited.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a few years, I moved on to Reuters where I\u00a0ultimately became a bureau chief and country manager responsible for Israel, West Bank and Gaza. I then moved back to the UK to run a TV production company, and then created my own TV channel on BSB.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Rupert Murdoch merged BSB with Sky, I was sacked (along with 400 others) but was quickly hired to lead a new joint broadcasting venture between the Maxwell Group and France Telecom. My massive satellite dishes can still be seen today on the roof of the ITN building on London's Gray\u2019s Inn Road \u2013 I\u2019d chosen the building as our offices as it was a lovely morning walk from my home in Islington!<\/p>\n

\u201cA chance meeting with venture capitalist Hermann Hauser later led to the two of us creating E*TRADE UK in 1998, the UK\u2019s first ever all-internet stock broking company.<\/p>\n

Booming investments<\/h3>\n

\u201cAfter a trade sale at the height of the dot-com boom in 2000, I moved to the south of France and became an angel investor \u2013 over 21 years, I invested in 26 companies all over the world. Now back living in the UK, I most recently bought a publishing company, Bite-Sized Books and am enjoying the thrill of building up another business. I can\u2019t see me ever retiring!<\/p>\n

\u201cDespite having held senior positions in my career, I definitely suffer from imposter syndrome \u2013 I\u2019m always surprised that people take me seriously! The surprise now, as a newbie publisher, is the assumption by quite eminent authors that my thoughts on changes to their drafts trump their own opinions. Dangerous! But it\u2019s really rewarding to be appreciated.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy advice to current students is of course to work hard and get the best degree you can \u2013 but don\u2019t forget to have fun. And give something back \u2013 to the University and ideally the city, too. It may be something unconventional like restoring a lock on the canal or working with a local charity, but you\u2019ll be glad you did when you join the alumni community and look back at your life as a student.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been back to campus many times since I left. Oddly, the biggest change is the trees \u2013 a real measure of what nearly 50 years of foresighted tree planting can do. It brings back only happy memories. I love the architecture of The Edge and the positive, friendly feel of the whole University \u2018village\u2019. The Sports Training Village is amazing, too \u2013 wish I was there now!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Julian Costley's (BSc Engineering 1975) career has taken him around the world, in industries including computing, journalism and broadcasting. He is currently CEO and owner of publishing company Bite-Sized Books. Here, he shares recollections of the early campus music scene,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1377,"featured_media":735,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,68],"tags":[5,98,12,91,95,9],"class_list":["post-734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-newsletter","tag-alumni","tag-campus","tag-careers","tag-case-studies","tag-engineering","tag-university-of-bath"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/48\/2021\/10\/Julian.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1377"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/on-parade\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}