The people and values behind Opagio

Ivan Gowan

Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder

25 years as tech entrepreneur, exited Angel

Serial entrepreneur and executive leader with 18 years in capital markets and 20 years building market-leading technology. Ivan led Capital.com as CEO, scaling the platform to 17,000 daily active users and co-founding Currency.com — the world's first regulated tokenised securities exchange. Prior to that, he spent 15 years on the Senior Leadership Team at FTSE 250-listed IG Group, leading IT development of their trading platforms. An active angel investor and board adviser across FinTech, Blockchain, MarTech, MedTech and HealthTech.

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David Stroll

Chief Scientist, Co-Founder

PhD in Productivity | 40 years in strategy and technical systems delivery

David holds a PhD in Productivity and brings over 40 years of experience at the intersection of technology, macro-economic theory, and innovation measurement. His academic research into how productivity is measured — and why current frameworks systematically undercount the intangible assets that drive modern economies — provides the intellectual foundation for Opagio's platform.

David leads Opagio's technology development and its research programme into intangible assets and productivity frameworks, including work aligned with the OECD Compendium and SNA 2025. His unique combination of deep economic scholarship and hands-on systems delivery makes him one of the few people in the industry who can bridge the gap between academic measurement theory and practical business tools.

Mark Hillier

Chief Commercial Officer, Co-Founder

BSc (Hons) Estate Management, Oxford Brookes | MRICS Chartered Surveyor

Mark is a commercial growth specialist with over 30 years of experience helping businesses scale and prepare for institutional investment or PE sale. A Chartered Surveyor who has worked with some of the UK's leading property investors — including Legal & General, AEW UK Investment Management, and Land Securities — Mark's career has been built on one principle: identifying where value lives in a business and making it visible to investors and buyers.

As Associate Partner at Gerald Eve, Mark led aggressive national expansion programmes for Whitbread (Premier Inn, Costa, Brewers Fayre) and helped Dr China acquire 100+ sites in under 5 years before their sale to a Hong Kong Stock Exchange-listed company. He previously assisted Brown & Jackson PLC in opening 80+ stores in just 12 months. As Co-Founder of DMR, he advises high-growth leisure and hospitality brands — including Clip 'n Climb (15+ openings/year), Turkuaz (20+ restaurants, preparing for PE sale), and JRC Global's Daiu Korean BBQ concept (10 new sites in 2026) — on expansion strategy, site acquisition, and financial modelling for break-even and profitability.

At Opagio, Mark drives go-to-market strategy, client acquisition, and revenue growth — applying three decades of experience helping businesses make their intangible value visible to the PE firms, fund managers, and institutional investors who determine what that value is worth.

Tony Hillier

Chairman, Co-Founder

MA, Balliol College, University of Oxford | Harvard Business School MBA with Distinction

Tony brings decades of experience across international capital markets, structured finance, and macroeconomic policy. He began his career as an analyst in international monetary economics at the Bank of England, building a foundation in the macroeconomic and monetary frameworks that shape global capital flows. After graduating with distinction from Harvard Business School, he joined NM Rothschild & Sons, where he rose to the Executive Board, led Eurobond underwriting for major Japanese borrowers, and pioneered cross-border tax-leveraged leasing and complex asset-backed securities structures.

Tony went on to serve as CEO of GEC Finance, managing strategic investments and industrial vendor financing for the conglomerate, and as a Non-Executive Director of Financial Security Assurance in New York, a specialist in triple-A financial guarantee insurance for asset-backed securities.

A serial fintech angel investor and adviser, Tony co-founded Opagio to apply his deep expertise in making intangible cash flows bankable — the principle that underpins Opagio's approach to intangible asset valuation.

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