Matt Little

Matt is an experienced Chair, Non-Executive Director and board member having sat on the Board of Directors or the Advisory Board of eight fast-growing technology firms and two charities. 

He has been a board member on four successful exits and the technology lead on a fifth. 

In 2022 Matt was appointed Chair of Melius Cyber, to support further growth of its innovative cyber security business following investment from the North East Venture Fund, managed by Mercia. Matt sat on the board of a further two VC- backed companies (Collabco and Genba Digital), having been appointed initially to assess their exit-readiness and help them successfully position themselves for acquisition. Matt went on to assist those companies through their due diligence processes and the subsequent integrations with their respective acquirers. 

Matt was Executive Director of the cyber security company ZoneFox between 2013 and 2018 and co-led the large-multiple acquisition (>10x) of the company by the US Cyber Security Firm Fortinet and went on to hold a senior role within Fortinet. 

Matt has been appointed to the board of several charities, most recently as Vice Chair/Interim Chair of Edinburgh Young Carers where he helps the senior leadership team in a range of areas including growth, strategy, and governance. 

Matt founded Blue Ocean Insight in 2019 to help businesses to scale their value, and deliver greater product success by aligning technology, people, product and strategy. 

Matt has helped organisations secure millions of pounds of investment (angel investment, venture capital, and government grant funding) and he has led R&D programmes and global divisions in complex domains including Cyber Security, Machine Learning/Al, SaaS, Gaming, Crypto Currency Platforms and Econometric Mathematical Modelling. 

Matt is regularly asked to present on technology topics and publishes insight papers. Recent examples include ‘OKRS – Hearts and Minds’ and ‘The role of a CPTO: A Mythical Beast?‘ 

Matt holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of St Andrews and graduated from MIT’s Entrepreneurial Development Programme in 2017.