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Blogs: Ben Heald

Picture of Ben Heald

CEO, Sift

Ben was one of the founders of Sift in 1996 and is one of the company’s largest shareholders. He launched AccountingWEB in May 1997, now one of the UK’s largest online professional publishing businesses. He also took responsibility for the subsequent launch of AccountingWEB US, BusinessZone, TrainingZone and TravelMole.

He acted as the first editor, then Community Director of AccountingWEB, then Director of Communities for Sift. He also took the lead in raising Sift's two rounds of external finance in 1999 and 2000. In 1999 he formed PracticeWEB, Sift’s Software as a Service (SaaS) business for the UK accountancy market. He was appointed CEO of Sift in September 2002.

Blog posts from this blogger

  • Monday 28th March 2011
    Online publishing is community publishing
    In a blog post on The Media Briefing earlier this month, Graham Ruddick argued that the traditional siloed split between commercial and editorial staff tended to discourage entrepreneurial thinking in publishing companies; referencing German war structures such as ‘auftragstaktik’ (ie what needs to be done to win the mission, rather than an over-reliance on rules or structure).
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