The founder's view
Twenty-one years in the chair you are sitting in. The plan, the report and the guarantee were all shaped by what he wished an agency had given him.
He started Rawnet in 1998, while still at university, and grew it into one of the largest digital agencies outside London, working for Honda, Castrol, Honeywell and O2. It was profitable and it won awards. It also taught him the difference between what an agency does well and what it gets paid for, which is not always the same thing.
In 2003 he co-founded Venntro Media Group with a credit card and no outside investment. Its White Label Dating platform let hundreds of entrepreneurs launch dating brands of their own, and it grew into the world's largest privately owned online dating business: around $50 million a year at its peak, 200 people, and offices in Windsor, London, San Francisco and Sydney. Almost every member arrived because the business was found online. He sold it in 2024.
Along the way the company made the Sunday Times Fast Track 100 three years running, and Ross was named EY Entrepreneur of the Year and IoD Director of the Year. He wrote Subscribe and Conquer, a playbook for subscription businesses, and still writes every week as The Reformed Entrepreneur.
Fortitude is the growth firm he wished he could have hired when he was in the founder's chair. He co-founded it and sits on the board, not in the day-to-day: David and Ashley run the business. Ten per cent of everything Fortitude invoices goes to the Fortitude Foundation, which Ross set up to help founders in trouble. He lives in Portugal with his wife, three children and two dogs.
