Andrew Dickinson announced today that he will be stepping back from his role as CEO of Jola and Adrian Sunderland, the current CTO and co-founder, will take over from him on 1st August 2023.
Andrew has worked in the channel for almost forty years, managing several successful businesses and mentoring many familiar faces. As a director of Mercury in the 1990s he was responsible for launching a revenue share scheme that, for the first time, paid resellers for calls made by their customers.
In 1996, following 10 years in the UK and America, he left the C&W Group to found a specialist ISP that achieved an Enterprise Value of £30m within 3 years. After investing in several tech start-ups, he led the MBI of Griffin Internet in 2005 and had built the channel revenues from £1m to £24m by the time the business was sold in 2012. Jola was started from scratch in 2014 with £50k, and by the same management team that was so successful at Griffin. BGF bought 25% from Jola shareholders in 2021 for £10.75m and the entire company was sold to Wireless Logic in July 2022.
“It is time for me to step back from a line-management position in favour of an advisory role, still within the Wireless Logic Group. Named recently as a leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™, Wireless Logic achieved unicorn status in 2021 and they are a world leader in IoT and mobile data. Since we were acquired by them in July 2022, working with Wireless Logic has been an absolute pleasure. Despite their extraordinary success, they have lost none of their entrepreneurial drive and they are a fantastic organisational and cultural fit for us.
I will be passing the CEO baton to Adrian Sunderland who is eminently qualified to lead the business into the next phase of its growth, ably assisted by an extraordinary management team and fantastic employees. Over the years I have developed great friendships with customers, suppliers and even competitors, many of whom I know I will keep in contact with. Thank you and I wish you all the very best.” Andrew Dickinson, CEO, Jola.
Adrian Sunderland commented, “Having worked closely with Andrew for over 15 years I’ve learned a lot from him. So, in August I look forward to taking the helm and putting that learning into practice whilst continuing on our unwavering mission to help the channel profit from the mobile data opportunity.”
“I am pleased that Andrew has decided to continue working with Wireless Logic in an advisory role and I know that Jola is in the best hands with Adrian and the talented team at Jola.” Oliver Tucker, CEO, Wireless Logic.