Think Bigger: Building in Scotland. The World is Yours.
Monday 16 November 2026 12:00 - 14:00
Location: Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» Garthdee Campus
An Open Conversation on Ambition & Scaling Globally from Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» Aberdeen Alumni Chris Herd, raising $65m in 2024. Featuring former Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» Architecture student now Founder of Firstbase, a platform that helps companies set up, equip and manage remote working.Â
Too many founders build businesses around what feels achievable instead of what is actually possible. As an Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³» alumnus who went from Aberdeen to building Firstbase, raising significant venture capital, serving global customers, and becoming one of Scotland's most recognized technology founders, Chris Herd has consistently challenged entrepreneurs to think beyond local markets, move faster, stay capital efficient, and build companies with genuine global ambition.
For Global Entrepreneurship Week 2026, we are excited to bring Chris back to campus for an honest and practical conversation with students, founders, startup teams, staff, alumni and ecosystem partners about what it really takes to build a world-class company from Scotland.
Rather than a traditional keynote, the session will focus on real lessons, unpopular truths, founder mistakes, ambitious thinking, and audience interaction.
Core Message: You do not need to leave Scotland to build a globally significant company, but you do need to think like a global founder from day one.
Bio
Chris Herd is the Founder & CEO of Firstbase (acquired by AppDirect), a tech platform to equip teams and manage IT assets globally. Over the last eight years, he scaled Firstbase to nine figures of revenue, made it the go-to Technology Management Platform at the world's most innovative companies like Spotify, Cloudflare and Ramp, and raised nearly $70M from leading investors, all without leaving his home in the North of Scotland.
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Cost to attend: Free
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