John Stapleton

John Stapleton is an entrepreneur, speaker, investor, adviser and mentor. He has created and grown successful consumer-led businesses in both the UK and the USA. John is experienced in start-up, early stage growth and scale-up stage businesses. He co-founded 3 FMCG businesses, building and growing 2 of them to exit. In 1987 he co-founded the New Covent Garden Soup Co Ltd., which pioneered and grew the fresh soup category in the UK. Daniels PLC bought New Covent Garden Soup Co in 1998. In 2005, John co-founded Little Dish, which supplies healthy, natural and convenient meals and snacks to children over one year old. Little Dish created the chilled toddler food category and became the go-to brand in fresh toddler food and healthy snacks. John sold Little Dish in 2017.

John now actively manages an investor/Non-Executive Director portfolio contributing value-added business growth advice, guidance and mentoring to business owners. John is a business thought leader and delivers keynotes on a range of entrepreneurial, management & motivational leadership topics: www.johnstapleton.eu/keynote-topics. John is resident business advisor to Bord Bia's entrepreneurial start-up programme in Ireland and is investor director of Mission Ventures, a progressive business accelerator designed to build challenger brands in the UK, principally in partnership through Corporate Venture Accelerators (www.missionventures.co.uk).