Harry Clarke
Commercial Director, Cobalt Telephone
Technologies
Graduate engineer and entrepreneur Harry Clarke is the Commercial and Founding
Director of Cobalt Telephone Technologies. Formed in 1997 with £20k of redundancy
money and grown for fifteen years without any external investment, Cobalt was sold in
August of last year to the Amsterdam based Parkmobile Group for an undisclosed sum.
Under Harry’s ownership Cobalt had become a leading UK provider of transaction
processing services - collecting over £15M of micropayments and despatching over half a
million text messages a month. Best known for its “RingGo” phone parking service, an
M-payments brand which has over 4 million registered users, growth was
achieved through hiring the right people, the methodical creation of a embracing culture
of success and the relentlessly frugal application of the principles of bootstrapping.
Born in Brentwood Essex as the eldest of four, Harry was schooled locally subsequently
leaving university to join the British Army as an officer serving in Germany during the
closing year of Cold War Europe before enjoying active service engaged in the front-line
clearance of mines during the First Gulf War.
Hired by Sue Griffin (MBA 89) he spent 3 years at Mercury Communications the
emergent Telecoms Carrier following his participation and demilitarisation on Cranfield’s
91/92 MBA course. Harry’s last proper job was for the Automobile Association in
Basingstoke where he benefitted from the hugely valuable opportunity of recognising
that he was not destined to flourish within corporate life.
Somewhat less dogmatic now and unexpectedly engaged by the challenges of driving
efficiencies upwards and outwards into the underbelly of the acquiring Group, Harry
currently remains at Cobalt whilst contemplating the opportunities that lie in the wake of
his liquidity moment.