Philip Lay

Since the mid-seventies, my career has been spent in high-tech. Today, I am a senior advisor at The Chasm Group, where I work with tech company CEOs and management teams. My main focus is to help clients who are growing rapidly to scale their businesses effectively and maximize their power in the market; and to help those companies that are struggling to achieve breakout growth, to develop actionable strategies and then execute them successfully. In this capacity I’ve worked with leading companies including Autodesk, Compuware, HP, Netsuite, Rackspace, Salesforce and SAP as well as many mid-sized and smaller companies.

Since late 2009 I have been a visiting professor at IESE business school in Barcelona, Spain, where I teach an elective course on high-tech marketing strategy to full-time MBA students. In 2017, my wife and I moved back to the UK after twenty-five years in the U.S. In 2018 and 2019 I operated as a part-time venture partner at Octopus Ventures in London, working with CEOs and management teams of portfolio companies to help sharpen their business and market strategies.

In my earlier executive career I was a sales executive at IBM UK in London, and co-founded, operated, and sold a successful software business in Sao Paulo, Brazil, TGR Software Ltda. From early 1995 on I became a managing director at The Chasm Group, then managing partner, and later, senior advisor.

Companies

• Visiting Professor, Business & Market Strategy IESE Business School (2009)
• Senior Advisor Chasm Group (1994)
• Venture Partner Octopus Ventures (2018 — 2019)
• Member of the Board of Directors Covisint (2014 — 2016)
• Strategy Advisor Strategy Advisor (2012 — 2014)
• Managing Director & Co-Founder TCG Advisors LLC (2003 — 2012)
• Managing Director The Chasm Group LLC (1995 — 2003)
• Country Manager - Brazil Cincom Systems (1992 — 1994)
• CEO and Co-Founder TGR Eletronica (1984 — 1991)