Charlie Ding

Charlie Ding lives in Liverpool and over the past four years he has set up a company called Sign Assured developing and selling a unique security technology called SignHear.

Instead of punching in numbers or remembering passwords the system uses signatures to identify users.

Charlie’s business mind was honed by The Masters of Enterprise Scheme at Manchester University. The scheme helped him to develop the tools to realise his ambition.

“Enterprise and initiative are what you need to start your own business” says Charlie.

Although the scheme was a great spring board, it was Rolls Royce who really allowed him to make his ideas reality. He was able to use Rolls Royce patents as well as many of their resources to get the business off the ground.

Through sheer hard work and determination he managed to put together an experienced board; with their help and the continued support of Rolls-Royce he found three Angel investors to provide initial finance for Sign Assured; he also invested some of his own money and Rolls-Royce provided the patents as their contribution.

Charlie says that his board have been a great inspiration to him; their combined wealth of experience has helped him to understand that making mistakes is the way you learn and develop.

He also says his Rolls-Royce mentor Paul Harris showed him the realities of business, and just how different they were to what most people had in mind.

“It’s not pretty, not easy, and sometimes not a lot of fun.” However he insists that  if you have what it takes, then you should go for it; “it’s a laugh, you can’t take your wealth to the grave with you, so you might as well have a good time now, and stop working for the ‘Man’ and start building an empire you can call your own”.

Charlie has one over riding ambition and that is to make Sign Assured a household name and he’s well on his way to making that dream a reality.