Ash Ali

Co-Founder & Growth Hacker

Uhubs

At Uhubs, we empower sales teams to unlock their full potential by transforming skill development into a precise, data-driven unfair advantage. 

By industrialising the monitoring and tracking of essential sales skills, we provide leaders with rapid insights to identify growth opportunities that genuinely drive revenue impact. 

Uhubs streamlines skill development, enabling modern sales teams to achieve measurable success faster and more effectively.

Co-Founder

The Unfair Advantage

The new Book "The Unfair Advantage" uncovers the secret behind why some startups make it and others don’t. Available in Jan 2020- Pre-order book from Amazon, WHSmiths, Foyles & Waterstones.

Wrapping up my experience as the first UK Marketing Director of £3.5 billion company JUST EAT into a practical narrative, I break apart the different types of unfair advantages swimming just under the surface of your favourite success stories. Every single one of them has an unfair advantage within the MILES structure (Money, Intelligence & Insight, Location & Luck, Education & Expertise, Status).  Out on January 9th 2020!

I've done keynotes on "Startup Marketing", "How to find your unfair advantage", "My personal/JUST EAT success story", "The first 3 years in startups" and have been part of several panel debates, pitch judging and discussions.

Author, Keynote Speaker & Co-Founder

Private angel Investments in seed stage startups across the globe. Mentorship and advice to startup entrepreneurs in various sectors and markets with a specific focus on online marketplaces, mobile app's and interesting social & community projects.

If you have startup requiring seed capital, an experienced startup advisor or non-executive role get in touch. 

- Idea assessment, including market sizing, competitive analysis, go to market strategy
- Applying lean methodology techniques to launch MVPs and find product market fit
- Growth Hacking
- Product and business development
- Digital marketing strategy
- Capital raising including marketing materials and business introductions
- Entrepreneur Mentorship & Advisor
- Lean startup
- EIR or non exec roles

Mentor @PiLabs @turn8 @istarter @TeamPK

Startup Investor, Advisor & Mentor

University of Warwick - Warwick Business School

Guest Lecturer

Spinks

Advising the senior Spinks team on continual growth for being the talent partner to the Start-Up / Scale Up sector.

Spinks Advisory Board Member

Royal Holloway, University of London

UCL School of Management

Loughborough University

Imperial College Business School

ESCP Business School

Washplus - Dubai's Laundry App

Acquired by new player in GCC with great ambitions. 

Seed investor and marketing advisor to Dubai's leading on-demand laundry and dry cleaning app, washplus. 

Founded in Dubai Silicon Oasis as part of Dubai's smart city drive we have an awesome vision and a very strong founding team and set of angel investors. 

Have been featured in 7 days, Time Out Dubai, Dubai Chronicle and Ahlan!

Washplus - On demand Laundry App

Co-Founder of Uhubs | Bestselling Author: 'The Unfair Advantage' | Empowering SaaS Sales Leaders to Exceed Targets

Hey there! I’m Ash Ali, an entrepreneurial spirit who thrives on turning ideas into reality. 

Best known as the first marketing director at Just Eat, I helped scale it to Series A which then went onto become UK’s first tech unicorns.

But my journey didn't start in the usual boardroom. Without a formal degree, I carved my path through sheer grit, instinct, and a knack for seeing opportunities where others see obstacles. 

Today, I leverage my 20 plus years experience to mentor, invest in, and fuel the next generation of startups.

I co-authored "The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed" which won Business Book of the Year.

Our book dives into leveraging your unique traits for success — something I live by and encourage others to recognise in themselves.

I'm currently leading Uhubs, a cutting-edge B2B sales performance startup that empowers sales leaders to define and measure excellence in their teams. 

Our unique Pulse technology provides real-time insights and metrics, helping businesses understand "what good looks like" in sales performance. 

It's about bringing clarity and precision to skills for better sales strategies, enabling teams to thrive in today's competitive markets.

My personal philosophy is to:

"Embrace your unique journey, your most significant 'unfair advantage' might just be something you already possess."

If you’re an entrepreneur at heart, a sales leader looking to elevate your team, or just want to chat about the startup world's highs and lows, feel free to connect! 

I'm always open to sharing ideas, speaking at events and conferences and specialise in GTM, Marketing, Sales and everything to do with starting tech startups.

Co-founder - We're hiring!

Uhubs helps busy sales leaders at top SaaS companies optimise their sales enablement to develop reps and grow revenue, by uncovering blind spots on performance, motivation and skills.

The Uhubs Pulse platform visualises each team’s development needs for personalised upskilling & provides data-driven coaching recommendations that are saving Sales Managers 40+ hrs per quarter and helping reps ramp up 30% faster.

Supercharge your sales team by booking a demo with us today.

David Ellis

beetu.be

We partner with B2B businesses and build them inbound client acquisition machines.

Learn more here 👉🏼 beetu.be

Founder & CEO

Teranga (now beetu.be)

PGC Group

Director of Business Development at PGC during two recording-breaking back to back years - 2020 and 2021. During these years we exceeded all previous records for new business, client growth, and overall revenue. 

Some of the achievements during that time:

- Responsible for clearly defining product-market fit, helping PGC to transition from an outbound sales model to mostly inbound, and building a predictable lead generation machine and sales process. This enabled us to win more business with a leaner BD function. 

- Played a leading role in launching PGCs solution into a new market segment. Worked on market fit, branding, messaging, sales process, pricing, as well as operations and service delivery. By the time I left PGC, this segment accounted for nearly 10% of overall revenue and was growing. 

- Led a small marketing team to clearly define PGCs brand and proposition in the market, as well as moving the business to a content-led organisation. Taking the lead on creative projects and campaigns. 

- Personally responsible for signing over 100 clients to PGC during my time in the sales function.

- Working as part of the senior leadership team to help set the direction of the business and define strategy. 

- Acting as PGCs voice in the marketplace. Speaking regularly and events, masterminds, workshops, and podcasts. 

My lovely colleagues made this farewell video: https://youtu.be/79864cVPUDo

www.pgcgroup.com

Director of Business Development

Business Development Manager

Star Actuarial Futures

Headhunted to join Star Actuarial’s team. 

My role involved all aspects of working in a recruitment business; business development, consulting clients on recruitment strategy, attending events, career/CV advice, conducting meetings, candidate screening and training, inputting into business strategy and direction, reviewing employment contracts, negotiating terms of business and much more.

Star Actuarial Futures provides leading edge recruitment services to the actuarial market. 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 - Actuarial Post: Agency of the Year

We work in all areas of the market on actuarial jobs in London, the UK and overseas. Our Consultants have over 60 years’ of experience in technical actuarial roles across a wide variety of fields, and play an active role within the actuarial profession; at conferences, on committees, and contributing to wider networking events. As a result, our understanding of the actuarial market and of actuarial vacancies is based on first-hand experience, industry-leading connections and up-to-date market knowledge.

Our honest approach to recruitment and our market expertise has delivered great results within the actuarial market.

Associate Director

Senior Consultant

The Emerald Group

Specialist Recruitment Consultant within the UK General Insurance (Non-Life) Actuarial Team.

Recruitment Consultant - General Insurance, Actuarial

Founder & Growth Consultant | Building beetu.be in public [from scratch] in 2023 🚀

📈 $2m+ Growth Framework (For B2B Companies That Want More Inbound Leads):  https://beetu.be/beetube-protocol-breakdown

🤝 Work With Me to Grow Your Business: https://beetu.be/growth-strategy-session

💬 DM me if you want to chat about growth

We are a boutique marketing agency only offering one service: SEO.

We help B2B businesses rank number one on Google and generate mind-blowing ROI with targeted SEO campaigns.

No Facebook ads, no social media management, no YouTube, no PPC, and no email marketing. Just SEO, and we’re really good at it.

Why? Because we exist to see our clients grow and firmly believe that SEO is the best long-term strategy to sustainably grow your business year on year.

The best bit? We have a performance-based model. Meaning, you get results or you'll get a refund.

Want to learn more, or see case studies & results?:
www.terangadigitalmarketing.com/casestudies

This week in Cape Town completely changed my view on remote vs. in person work.

It's amazing how much you can get done as a team when you're in the room together.

Little moments. Throw away comments. Ad hoc discussions etc.

Don't get me wrong, I still love locking myself away in my lab (home office), putting on brain.fm (thank me later), and cranking through deep work.

But there is a special energy when you are in person and it makes me super proud of the company we're building. 

I guess a bit of both is best?!

I guess I'm going to HAVE to spend more time in Cape Town... 🤪

Founder at beetu.be 🟣 | Growth Nerd 🤓

I’ve advised 300+ companies over the last five years. And the number one thing holding most of them back isn’t talent, effort, or even budget.

It’s an obsession with tools and tactics, and not enough time spent zooming out to think strategically.

It sounds like a cliché. But it’s true.

I probably have some version of these conversations 5–10 times every single week:

- “What’s the best time of day to post on LinkedIn?”

- “We’ve bought ScoreApp — how do we get more people to complete our scorecard?”

- “Someone told us we need to do X, Y and Z to show up in ChatGPT results. Is that right?”

These are not bad questions. They’re often worth exploring.

But they’re operating at the wrong altitude.

Tactics alone do not create momentum. And most tactics are just trends with a short shelf life.

What consistently separates high-growth companies from the rest is their willingness to ask harder, slower, more uncomfortable questions like:

- "What are we actually trying to say to the market?"

- "What do we want to be known for — and why should anyone care?"

- "How are we defining and measuring success in our growth function?"

- "What systems can we build today that will still be working for us in 12 months?"

When you start thinking at this level, everything shifts.
Your decision-making gets clearer. Your marketing gets simpler, not more complicated.

And ironically, once you truly understand your strategy, you can confidently ignore 99% of tools, hacks and “must-do” tactics being shouted online.

Most businesses are obsessed with generating leads.

I think that’s the wrong goal.

Even Alex Hormozi - who I admire - tends to promote a hustle-style “grow as fast as possible" approach to growth.

But in my experience, that mindset often sabotages long-term growth.

It's quite possible to generate SIGNIFICANT returns from social media platforms without any of the traditional lead gen tactics:
 - No automations
 - No cold DMs
 - No “comment to get my swipe file” posts

In fact, in our business, we don't even focus on "leads" in the traditional sense.

Instead, we follow a simple principle:
 👉 Give more. Get more.

This comes from something I have observed:

The more that I give away, the more money I make.

So,
- We give away our best ideas freely.
- We help people without asking for anything back.
- We prioritize real conversations over sales scripts.

It’s slower at first—but it compounds.

Here’s why this works:

Lead gen tactics attract low-quality, short-term buyers

Your inbox fills with people who ghost you

Your close rates drop and it doesn’t feel like you

When you shift to a give-first strategy:
 ✅ You build trust
 ✅ You attract the right buyers
 ✅ You create offline virality (people talk about you in Slack, WhatsApp, and real-life convos)

In this video, I walk through:
1) How this “give more” philosophy is rooted in timeless principles
2) What it looks like in practice
3) The specific LinkedIn strategy we use to generate revenue without pushing products

A few months ago, I did a free consult for a founder who was just getting started.

They didn’t have a budget. There was no hidden agenda. I just liked their mission and wanted to help.

We spent an hour talking through their positioning, messaging, and go-to-market strategy. It was a great conversation. Part business, part life, the kind of exchange that reminds you why you got into this in the first place.

A few weeks later, they introduced me to someone in their network.
That person became a paying client.

Now, I didn’t give the free consult expecting a referral. And that’s the point. When you give without agenda, without urgency, without trying to extract value- things tend to flow back in unexpected ways.

It’s not “tactical.” It’s just how relationships work.

This is why I believe in showing up generously. It doesn’t scale like a funnel. But it compounds like trust.

“The world of the generous gets larger.”

It’s a line from Proverbs (bible), but it might be the best marketing advice I’ve ever heard.

When I launched beetu.be, we started with a simple idea. That we would give our best ideas away for free. No opt in's. No lead gen tactics.

(At the time, we called it "building in public")

Almost immediately, it had a huge impact.

People really resonated with what we were saying and reached out to us. Clients (and non clients!) started referring business to us. Customers arrived already trusting us.

I didn’t really understand it at the time but I’ve seen it enough times now to know: generosity compounds.

And I think the market can feel the difference.

One approach says: “Here’s a teaser, now give me your email.”

The other says: “Here’s everything I’ve got. Hope it helps.”

On a long enough timeline, the second one ALWAYS wins.

I’d take trust over tactics any day.

I love Wednesdays. 

For the last few months, I’ve been blocking out the whole day.

No meetings. (Very little) email/Slack. 

Just open space to think, write, and create content. 

Not only is it super enjoyable, but I’ve come to realise this is one of the highest ROI things I can do as the CEO of our company. 

Does anyone else have a routine like this? 

Ps: best part - I do the whole thing wearing Birkenstocks 👞

No alternative text description for this image

This is one of the most powerful growth channels that is impossible to track.

There’s no attribution. No UTM tags. No data trail.

But suddenly, someone pops up in your inbox saying:
“Can we set up a call?"

When we ask where they found us, the answer is almost always some version of:
 “A colleague sent me one of your posts.”
 “You came up in our team’s Slack.”
 “Someone forwarded your name in a WhatsApp group.”

It's offline virality.

(Ps: marketers hate this because it doesn't show up in a dashboard 🤣)

But it drives some of the highest-quality conversations we have.

And it only happens when you consistently share ideas that people actually want to talk about.

No gimmicks. Just real insight.

There’s a brand called Golden Goose that sells "distressed" sneakers for $500+.

They’re scuffed. Frayed. Sometimes even have holes in them.
And they regularly sell out.

So why do people buy them?

(I may even have a couple of pairs myself 😅)

It’s not about materials. It’s about meaning.

Buyers aren’t purchasing shoes. They’re purchasing a signal. A belief. A feeling.

And this psychology shows up in B2B more than most people realise.

People don't buy services, they buy BELIEFS.

For example, how is it that some businesses (eg: McKinsey or IBM) charge 2–3x their competitors and still win the work?

These companies have built a brand perception that communicates trust, authority, and clarity. Their buyers already believe in them, even before the pitch.

Hence the old adage "Nobody ever got fired for hiring IBM"! 

OR why do thousands of people buy tools like HubSpot or ScoreApp?

It's not because they have a particular marketing hack or have found a special way to build a funnel. 

We are buying into the beliefs of these brands. We believe that if we just purchase a tool for $99/month, our business will grow!

Meanwhile, the average B2B company I speak with is stuck in a cycle of tactics.

(Posting on LinkedIn. Sending cold emails. Testing lead magnets.)

But they are not zooming out long enough to think about what message they truly want to convey to the marketplace and what they really want to stand for.

I believe this might be the single most important aspect of growth. If you get it right, growth becomes inevitable.

In my latest video, I break this all down:
- What Golden Goose can teach B2B brands
- Why buyers don’t just buy services—they buy beliefs
- A 3-part framework to build a thesis your market wants to follow

taplio

The Battle

Ash Ali

David Ellis

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreDavid Ellis's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Ash Ali

David Ellis

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}David Ellis's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreDavid Ellis's LinkedIn Performance