Mark Logan, former chief operating officer of Skyscanner, the Edinburgh-based travel fare aggregator, was instrumental in growing it from fledging start-up to a £1 billion global brand, making it one of only two recent Scottish start-ups to achieve “unicorn” status.
While Skyscanner, founded by Gareth Williams, was sold for USD 1.75 billion (£1.4 billion) to China’s largest travel company Ctrip, in 2016, Scotland’s only other unicorn FanDuel — the fantasy sports game company that was valued at £1 billion three years ago — recently sold for less than half of that, with the founders walking away with nothing.
Rather than move his family to California in search of the next project, Logan’s aim is to recreate Silicon Valley on his doorstep. To this end, he has teamed up with his alma mater, Glasgow University, and helped to fund Tech Start, a programme to mentor entrepreneurs launching software as a service businesses. The model is Stanford University, which fulfilled a similar role for early tech entrepreneurs.
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