Management Team
Francis Charig
Chief Executive & Founder
Francis, a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer for 2006, is the Chief Executive and founder of Antix. During his career he has raised more than $70m in capital investment, is an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year semi-finalist and is the former Chairman of the Open Contents Platform Association, headquartered in Tokyo.
Prior to forming Antix, Francis was the co-founder, Chairman & Chief Executive of Tao Group, the pioneer of binary portable, high performance multimedia software. Francis has consulted to numerous blue chips including Dow Jones and IBM and was also the Head of the Trading Systems Business Unit at the London Stock Exchange successfully launching and deploying the world's first digital front office trading system.
Francis began his career as a software engineer at Hoskyns (now Cap Gemini) after completing a degree in Political Science.
Francis is also a board director of Baillie Gifford Shin Nippon plc, a Japan-focused investment fund.
Chris Hinsley
Director of Technology
Chris was one of the world's leading engineers at the birth of the video games industry with numerous successful games titles such as Pyjamarama, Onslaught and Everyone's a Wally, and was the recipient of major games industry awards.
He conceived of the unique ideas that led to the formation of Tao Group with Francis Charig; Tao's products were embedded into more than 30 million devices including phones, PCs and phones.
Chris is a key member of the engineering team at Antix and has an innate understanding of multimedia technologies and the games market based on over 25 years of experience.
Mike Foss
Chief Operating Officer
Prior to being appointed as Antix's COO, Mike had a similar role at Tao Group. All engineering development and IT management are under his control and he has direct responsibility for coordinating third party/partner development programs. He has over 30 years of Design and Technical Management experience.
Mike headed the Systems Design Group at Hitachi Micro Systems Europe, leading a group of 70 engineers driving Microcontroller Tools development and manufacturing. He had a major influence and impact on Hitachi's worldwide strategic directions, working closely with the Japanese and U.S. headquarters.
He is an Honors graduate from the University of Bradford.
Andrew Spriggs
Chief Financial Officer
Andrew oversees all financial and operational management of the company.
Prior to Antix he worked for Tao Group as CFO for some years which followed work at Motorola as European Financial Reporting Manager for the mobile phone sector, expanding that role to encompass all aspects of financial planning and analysis for that sector, and becoming European controller for the sector's advertising and marketing function and budget. Always involved in business development projects, he became EMEA Strategy & Business Development Controller, working on strategy formulation, investment process and projects involving the delivery of compelling entertainment content to mobile devices.
Prior to Motorola, Andrew worked at Arjo Wiggins Appleton plc, the Anglo-French paper company where he restructured the central accounting department, installed new accounting systems, and culminated his stay at AWA by working as project manager on a major merger deal.
He holds a B.A. in English Language and Literature from Durham University and qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Price Waterhouse in 1990, working in PW's London and Paris offices.
Shelly Askew
Legal Counsel and Company Secretary
Shelly reports directly to the CEO and the Board, responsible for all IP and contract-related activity, company secretarial matters, M&A and company financing transactions.
Shelly worked for Tao Group as its Legal Counsel and Company Secretary for more than six years, prior to which she was at an NYSE-listed company involved in television direct marketing and e-commerce as Vice President, Head of Legal Affairs, and Company Secretary. At Tao Shelly developed the legal team and was responsible for advising on all legal matters relating to the business.
Shelly began her career in 1989 at a leading media & IT law firm, Olswang. Qualifying as a solicitor in 1991, she worked in the corporate/commercial department on M&A, MBOs, flotations and public offerings, joint ventures, shareholder agreements, capital restructurings, private equity and other financings, agency and distributions.
Shelly graduated from Warwick University with a law degree.
Daniel Shelton
Chief Technology Officer
Daniel is responsible for overall system technical architecture and design.
He has considerable and relevant experience gained through extensive market knowledge and many years of outstanding engineering responsible for the development of everything from real time kernels to high function browsers, cryptographic algorithms and developer tools.
Daniel graduated from Birmingham University with a first class degree in Electronic & Computer Engineering and the A.P Jarvis prize for outstanding achievement in 1993, after which he joined the software engineering team at Tao Group. He developed multimedia software technologies targeting the mobile and consumer electronics industries, finally becoming Senior System Architect before joining Antix Labs at its inception.
Adrian Dawson
Engineering Director
Adrian is responsible for technical development within Antix. He oversees product planning and architecture, and co-ordinates all aspects of the product development lifecycle.
He spent 17 years at ICL (now part of Fujitsu) where he worked on a variety of mainframe, PC and telecommunications engineering projects before spending 10 years at Tao Group in various senior engineering roles, his last year as Engineering Development Director.
Adrian has a BSC in Computing and Maths from the University of Manchester.
Peter Davidson
Developer Program Director
Peter leads Antix's Developer Program. He has over 20 years experience in Information and Communications Technology engineering, sales, software development and customer support services.
Peter worked at Tao Group as Engineering Sales Director, Prior to that he was at Arrow in Technical Sales and Marketing of both Silicon and Sub-assembly electronics.
Before Arrow, he worked in technical sales for a small high tech start up and spent several years in the Ministry of Defense where he was responsible for managing internal and external avionics research programs.
Peter has a Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds.
Neil Curtis
Marketing Director
Neil has 25 years experience in technology marketing, business development and general management.
He has held a variety of senior marketing and management positions implementing communications strategies and frameworks for internal and external audiences, helping companies successfully translate technical innovation and features into business solutions and benefits and creating and implementing joint business development plans forming relationships at all levels between partner companies.
As Antix's Marketing Director, Neil is responsible for formulating, directing and implementing the company's marketing strategy and associated plans including the strategic direction of all marketing activity on the company's products and services.
Prior to joining Antix, he was Marketing Director at Tao Group, Group Head of Marketing at ITM Group and Marketing Director, EMEA, at NCR WWCS. He has held management positions at Computervision and Prime Computer.
Neil is a member of the Institute of Marketing, the Institute of Directors and Cranfield Alumni.
Jeff Moles
Vice President
Jeff's responsibilities include customer-facing business development worldwide as well as internal product management and strategy.
Jeff is a veteran of the mobile and wireless industry, credited with nineteen US patents in various areas of wireless and mobile technology.
Prior to joining Antix, Jeff was the Director of Technology and Business Development at Tao Group. While at Samsung Telecommunications America Jeff co-led a nearly fifty-person team of in-house employees and outsourced contractors to develop the world's first combined CDMA+GSM "Worldphone".
In his early career, Jeff advanced through the engineering ranks at Motorola where he gained a broad base of technical expertise in the design of digital hardware, ASICs, regulatory and voluntary compliance, and system architecture for CDMA and GSM infrastructure equipment.
He holds a BSEE from the University of Illinois at Chicago and an MSEE from National Technological University.
