Meet SETsquared Bath's interim Centre Director

Brian Prescott is the new Centre Director at the University of Bath’s SETsquared Innovation Centre and Entrepreneur in Residence for the ERDF Advanced Engineering Business Acceleration Hub. 

A Mancunian, his early career followed a science degree and began in sales with Duracell. Frustration at the lack of opportunity spawned a move to London, where Brian joined the rapidly-growing PKFA hotel management consultancy becoming the Firth’s youngest ever consultant before moving into marketing with Trusthouse Forte. 

A Gulf War-generated redundancy led to his first business - cut short by the chance to run a three- year tourism project on the Lincolnshire Coast. Returning south to join an Amex educational charity, Brian ‘discovered’ the web, learning to code at roughly the same time as the first Netscape browser was being launched. 

Cue the next start-up, a recruitment site eventually acquired by monster.com. Buoyed by this heady success and the completion of his Warwick MBA, another start-up followed, raising £0.5m in angel funding only for the deal to collapse on the day the Dotcom bubble burst and the tech market failed in 2001. 

Suddenly much poorer, Brian returned to the hotel world, joining ICHG in a senior strategy role during a period of seismic change in the industry. After moving to Bath fifteen years ago, he founded BSpark, a niche web development and marketing business. Shortly after, he co-founded the Stay website franchise, helped to create a successful gritting business and pioneered the regional launch of The Marketing Centre, an agency specialising in providing part-time marketing directors. 

He has been instrumental in growing a wide range of businesses across multiple sectors, and when he isn’t thinking about business growth he can often be found under the bonnet of his beloved 1973 MGB GT or cycling the Two Tunnels path.