About Simon
Twenty-five years in the room where it happens.
The short version
I’m Simon Court, coach to founder CEOs, author of Founder’s Legacy, and founder of a leadership coaching practice built on twenty-five years of working with founders, leaders and leadership teams at the moments that shape their businesses. I’ve coached the CEOs and leadership teams behind two unicorns, Miniclip and Tipico. I’m based in London and work internationally. Current and recent clients span Europe, North America, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.
The longer version
I’ve spent my career in fast-growing businesses across entertainment, technology, biotechnology, travel, fashion, insurance and venture capital: private companies, VC- and PE-backed businesses, and publicly owned household names. In many countries, at every stage of maturity from startup to reinvention. Before coaching, I was HR Director for Ericsson in the UK, and I spent two years living and working in Milan. Along the way I picked up an MBA from Warwick Business School and an MSc from Imperial College London. Though most of what I know, my clients taught me.
All of that experience is channelled into my coaching. But experience on its own isn’t enough, and neither is neutral questioning. I’ve learned to bring who I am to what I do. Leaders find my experience and ideas useful, and I want to help them make progress fast: to act, to change their fortunes, and to feel emotionally committed to the change. There’s no avoiding the difficulty, the uncertainty, or the hard work of changing something important. My job is to make sure you don’t face it alone, and that you face it as yourself.
In 2024 I distilled what I’d learned into Founder’s Legacy, published as an Inc. Original. The foreword is by Rob Small, founder of Miniclip, one version of what this work can lead to. There are many more stories, and most of them I’ll never be able to tell. Confidentiality is part of the deal, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
The practice
My work with founders runs through Value Partnership Ventures, the practice I co-own with Jane Court. I’m also Chairman of Value Partnership.
A personal note
My belief that leadership can be learned started with my father. He was a headteacher for twenty-one years, and he knew the name of every one of the nine hundred children in his school. He learned them by teaching the youngest class himself each year. He was fondest of the difficult ones: when he caught a boy selling sweets in the playground, he put him in charge of the school shop rather than punish him. He taught me that leadership isn’t about authority or status. It’s about courage, community, and the difference you make. He’s the reason I write about it and practise it.
The book, in turn, is dedicated to my daughter, Meghan, a leader in the making. Between the two of them sits everything I believe about this work: that leadership can be learned, that it’s learned fastest in honest company, and that the legacy of a founder is not the exit. It’s the business, the people, and the leader they become along the way.
Away from work, I’m a keen runner and skier. Finding another gear isn’t just something I coach.