Lawyer to founder

Ean Brown is the co-founder of a start-up business revolving around an amazing and elegant device that clips onto wheel of a bicycle to turn it into an e-bike and back again to a normal bike in seconds. The company has global ambitions.

Many people choose to set up their own businesses for a range of personal, professional and entrepreneurial reasons. Some have lightbulb moments, hitting upon a product or service that they want to unleash on the world. Most like the idea of being in control of their own lives, the desire for independence without being accountable to anyone else. Or they think that having a business can provide for their families and successors. And, of course, plenty of them want to make a fortune (who doesn’t?).

Ever the lawyer, Ean knows full well the need to have intellectual property protection. Monopolies are illegal under competition laws that most countries have, but, he says, having a patent is effectively a legal monopoly. He makes absolutely sure that the product he has created with others is as protected as it can be.

The product in question is Skarper, a battery attachment that clips on to any bike and converts it into an e-bike and back again in seconds. It was invented by Alastair Darwood, an engineer and medical doctor who has also developed and patented a number of medical devices. The idea came to him while participating in the Tour du Mont Blanc and seeing heavy, e-bikes lumbering past. He thought they were, in effect, motor machines built around a bike frame but had lost the feel of a bike.
 

But what to call the business? After kicking around some 300 names, it was actually Ean’s wife, Sue, who came up with the name Skarper, based on the cockney rhyming slang for “go” (Scarpa Flow, the Scotland naval base). The logo, a sideways “S”, can be looked both as a flowing movement and as a bicycle.

The product was launched last November and is well on the way to achieving sales of one million (in value, not units). Ean and his fellow founders have global ambitions and other products in the pipeline. The unit is a simple, elegant piece of technology that will last for ever, so there is no reason why bike riders everywhere can’t use it. 

Ean always knew he would be a lawyer, but looked to achieve as broad an education as he could. He first studied international relations before applying to law firms, “I was never in a rush,” he says. “Education is not purely about schooling: it is about life, how the world works.”

He joined Herbert Smith, as was, in 1990 as a trainee (then known as articled clerks) and, while he thought the experience was definitely worthwhile, he felt he didn’t really fit in. He particularly remembers Roger Wellings as someone who was not just an extremely good lawyer but also “just a good human being”.

After Herbert Smith, Ean took on a range of legal roles, including being, in effect, a general counsel for hire to different businesses. That was quite an adjustment. While in private practice, certainly in big law firms, there is always support, for example, being able to draw on banks of precedents. Working freelance, he was effectively on his own. As Ean puts it, “I had to work out things for myself. I learned how to draft on the fly, which was an amazing skill. As in-house counsel and then freelance general counsel, I would fly around the world and close business. I have a BA gold card for life, which I not sure is a badge of honour or a reminder of the sacrifice I put my family through.”