Andrew Dixon OBE

Founder, ARC InterCapital

Andrew Dixon is a venture capitalist, founder of ARC InterCapital, and founding trustee of The Woodhaven Trust.

Starting his career in banking at Société Générale and Goldman Sachs, Andrew has spent more than two decades investing in micro, small and medium-sized businesses. Through ARC InterCapital, he has invested £20 million in more than 40 British companies and his current portfolio collectively employs more than 1,500 people across the UK.

ARC InterCapital

ARC InterCapital invests in companies with clear, easy-to-understand business concepts and the potential to realise meaningful earnings growth in five to ten years. An active investor, Andrew Dixon works closely with the portfolio companies’ CEOs, management and sales teams, providing them with practical, strategic guidance on their business strategy and expansion.

Many investments in its portfolio have gone on to become well-recognised brands. For example, ARC was the first seed investor in Gamesys, which went on to become one of the most successful businesses in the online gaming space and, in 2006, was the UK's fastest-growing private technology company in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100. In 2015, Toronto-listed Intertain Group acquired Gamesys’ UK operations in a £426-million deal. JPJ Group plc went on to complete the acquisition of the wider Gamesys business in a deal valued at £490 million in 2019 to form LSE-listed Gamesys Group plc.

Others companies have seen rapid growth in niche sectors, such as call answering service Cymphony and LIVE IT, the global online ticketing platform for live events. Since 2010, Andrew Dixon has served as Chairman of Infinitesima, the Abingdon-based high-tech firm that developed the Rapid Probe Microscope for the semiconductor industry.

The Woodhaven Trust

In 2008, Andrew founded The Woodhaven Trust to champion prison reform and prisoner rehabilitation. It funds initiatives that provide offenders and ex-offenders with an opportunity to develop their technical, literacy and employability skills, offering them with stable pathways into employment and self-employment.

Recognising one of the key barriers to rehabilitation was finding employers who were willing to give ex-offenders a second chance, in 2013 Andrew co-founded Prosper 4 Group, which runs the UK’s only national jobs board for ex-offenders. He also funded a report, From Inmates to Entrepreneurs, into how prison entrepreneurship could break the cycle of reoffending, which was produced and launched by the Centre for Entrepreneurs.

Inspired by San Quentin prison’s Last Mile project, in 2016, Andrew co-founded social enterprise Code4000, which teaches coding skills in prisons to increase offenders’ prospects of meaningful employment upon release. The non-profit has gone on to launch initiatives in Humber and Edinburgh; created an employment hub in Sheffield to employ and train ex-offenders as software developers, and was a finalist for Vodafone’s Techstarter awards.

In 2014, Andrew founded the Liberal Democrat Business & Entrepreneurs Network, a network of senior business people and entrepreneurs that provide the Liberal Democrats with expert advice on business and economic policy. In that role, Andrew works in concert with other members of the network to help develop policy to enable British businesses to flourish.

Since 2010, Andrew has been an Enterprise Fellow at The Prince’s Trust. The Fellowship brings together the UK's leading entrepreneurs, unified by a collective commitment to pass on their experience and expertise – and inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Why do you support the work of The Entrepreneurs Network?

The Entrepreneurs Network do a fantastic job providing not only a forum to develop policies to support our entrepreneurs but an important bridge between politicians and business. Entrepreneurs are the lifeblood of our economy. Innovative start-ups not only sustain jobs today but they will go on to create the jobs of the future. The UK will not thrive and flourish without these ambitious entrepreneurs and start-up businesses, and The Entrepreneurs Network ensure they stay at the heart of discussion in Westminster.

What research should more people read?

I would urge everyone to read The Start-up Manifesto, which has lots of exciting ideas about how to transform the UK economy. One of the ideas I was especially drawn to was launching government-funded coding schools for lifelong learning. Addressing the skills and employability gap for younger people is only half of the battle, as the research says. This is something that I feel particularly strongly about, and one of the reasons I launched Code4000 to get coding taught in prisons to reskill offenders.

Why is the UK an attractive place to grow a business?

The UK has an amazing combination of incredible entrepreneurial talent with some of the world’s best academic research institutions. This combination makes for a very powerful mix: not only do we have people who are able to see ahead of the curve and anticipate the rapidly changing needs of customers, but we also have the technology to do just that in new and more efficient ways.