Tech Paired #3 | Building, Scaling & Reinventing: The Entrepreneurial Playbook w/ Fraser Ferguson

Описание: Fraser Ferguson - Founder & CEO of KubeNet, serial entrepreneur, and former FTSE 250 board member — joins Michael Phair and Stuart Alexander for a wide-ranging conversation on what it really takes to build technology businesses that survive multiple eras of change.

Fraser’s career spans nearly three decades of UK tech evolution: from early internet and the dotcom boom, through telecoms and recruitment, to today’s modern managed services, cloud, cyber, and digital infrastructure landscape. Few leaders have built, scaled, exited, failed, and reinvented themselves as many times and with as much honesty as Fraser.

In this episode, we go beyond surface-level leadership talk and into the realities founders and tech leaders face: timing versus hype, why hard work still matters more than narrative, and why “not getting carried away” might be the most important rule in business.

Fraser shares the story of founding one of Scotland’s earliest internet companies and seeing first-hand how infrastructure constraints, storage costs, and premature markets shaped the dotcom era lessons he draws direct parallels to today’s AI boom. We explore how he scaled a recruitment business to 110 people, why sales engines matter, and how relationships compound over decades. He also opens up about exiting that business for £4.9m, why every founder needs an exit lens (even early), and what happens when acquirers force culture change too fast.

We dig into failure too including a six-figure loss that taught Fraser a brutal lesson about focus, capital discipline, and why you can “run low on money, but you can’t run out of it.”

The conversation then turns to KubeNet and the evolution of a true modern MSP. Fraser explains how the business grew from WLR and ethernet foundations into a fully-fledged MSP and ISP delivering cloud, connectivity, voice, cyber, IoT, and digital transformation services nationwide. He breaks down what real managed service looks like, why many providers are just transactional IT, and how COVID accelerated a structural shift in the MSP market.

For CIOs, CTOs, and tech leaders, Fraser offers clear views on digital transformation: why it must be driven top-down, who should own it, and why fear not technology is the biggest blocker. We explore vendor pressure, subscription economics, accreditation costs, and the hidden financial realities MSPs face as Microsoft, Cisco, VMware, and others rewrite the rules.

AI and automation are a major theme too — not as hype, but as tools to augment engineers, reduce noise, and free teams to work on higher-value problems. Fraser explains why the future of MSP talent is multi-skilled, why rigid role definitions are dying, and how leaders must adapt to a workforce that values flexibility, purpose, and growth differently than previous generations.

Cybersecurity, compliance, and resilience round out the conversation, with Fraser making a strong case that MSPs not traditional cyber consultancies are best positioned to dominate the cyber market over the next 3–5 years. Not because they’re smarter technically, but because they already sit at the intersection of trust, sales, and long-term customer relationships.

We close with Fraser’s advice for anyone building or leading through change in tech today: work hard, don’t quit, don’t be rigid and don’t be afraid to change course when the ground shifts under your feet.

🎙️ Hosted by Michael Phair and Stuart Alexander, co-founders of Tech Pair, a tech & change recruitment firm built on real relationships and hands-on expertise.

Tech Pair is a founder-led video-first technology & change recruitment company partnering with companies across the UK on permanent, contract, RPO, and managed service models.

Chapters:
00:00 Welcome — From Dotcom to Modern MSP
00:50 The mindset behind building across multiple tech eras
03:30 Spotting tech waves early (and why being first isn’t always best)
07:10 Dotcom lessons that still apply to AI and cloud today
11:40 Scaling a recruitment business to 110 people (and what actually mattered)
16:10 Exiting for £4.9m — why every founder needs an exit lens
20:10 Hype, timing & the record label lesson tech founders ignore
24:10 Failure, focus & losing £100k the hard way
28:30 How KubeNet was really built: infrastructure before hype
33:10 What “real MSP” actually means (and why many get it wrong)
37:00 Digital transformation: why it must come from the top
41:00 Vendor pressure, accreditations & the hidden cost of MSP growth
44:50 Trust as a competitive advantage in commoditised tech markets
48:20 Leadership in practice: ownership, honesty & answering the phone
52:10 AI, automation & augmenting engineers (not replacing them)
55:30 Scaling through acquisition: growth vs culture fit
58:40 Why culture breaks most acquisitions
1:01:30 The future of MSPs: multi-skilled talent, cyber & resilience
1:04:20 Fraser’s advice for tech leaders navigating constant change
1:05:16 Close