10 March 2025

Richard Brandon, VP of Strategy at RtBrick

Who was your hero when you were growing up?
Well, there were plenty of scientists, which I realise sounds a bit geeky – Faraday, Rutherford and Albert Einstein, of course. And there were a fair few footballers to redress the balance, most notably Aston Villa’s Brian Little. But if I had to choose, then I think I’d have to settle for Bugs Bunny. He was the sort of rabbit I always aspired to be. Smart, funny and always one step ahead of everyone else. Sorry Albert, but Bugs is a high bar to get over.

What was your big career break?
Actually, there was one clear moment. Of course, I like to think I had some talent and worked hard, but sometimes you have to recognise a bit of good fortune. I got mine when I was transitioning from a technical role in fibre optics to product management. Called my General Manager’s office at the time, and I was waiting for him to tell me I’d got the fibre optics product management job. Instead, he told me they needed a product manager for routers. I didn’t know what a router was, and he didn’t either. The rest, as they say, was history, or more accurately… was The Internet. It was quite the ride after that.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?
I always wanted to be an astronaut. I mean, who wouldn’t? I grew up watching the Apollo space missions and had some amazing poster-sized photographs of the early moon landings pinned to my bedroom wall. Sadly, I was somewhat travel-sick as a child, which isn’t a great quality for high G manoeuvres or zero-G space travel. But I’m still waiting for the call…

If you could dine with any famous person, past or present, who would you choose?
I think this is the toughest question on the list. Most people have something interesting to say, and you’d expect the famous ones to have more to say than most. I’d probably go for a historical figure - someone we don’t know as much about as modern celebrities. I reckon Shakespeare would be entertaining, and we know so little about him that I could fill in a few gaps afterwards. Maybe we could work on a movie plot together over the cheese course (see below!).

What would you do with £1 million?
Probably make a low-budget movie, if you can call spending a million pounds on anything ‘low budget.’ What an indulgence that would be!

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?
I’ve had lots of good business advice over the years, but I will go with a piece of parenting advice I was given once, which is that… ‘children are never really yours, they are only leant to you.’ I think it helps you value your time with them when they are young and deal with the challenges of ‘releasing them into the wild’ when they are older.

If you had to work in a different industry, which would you choose?
Certainly one of the creative industries. For a long time, I would have said the music industry, but Spotify has pretty much finished that off for most creatives, unless you’re Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran. It’s a pretty tough place these days. I think I’d go for the movie business. I always love the collaborative nature of working with video, even on a corporate level.

The Rolling Stones or the Beatles?
I saw the Stones when they were still only middle-aged – a long time ago. But it has to be The Beatles. For the depth, variety, and amount of groundbreaking things they did in such a short span of time. I always was a big fan, and I still am. Obviously, there is the Lennon and McCartney talent goldmine, but I have a particularly soft spot for George Harrison’s songs too: “Here Comes the Sun”, “Something”, and “While My Guitar Softly Weeps” - firm favourites!

Where would you live if money was no object?
Well, I love my house and don’t really want to move out. But I wouldn’t mind relocating it to somewhere with better weather. Perhaps you could move it to Seville for me? Great weather and incredible food!

What’s the greatest technological advancement in your lifetime?
It sounds a bit trite to say The Internet, especially as I was involved in it from its early days. But it’s hard to beat. Its influence hasn’t all been positive when you look at some of the impact of social media, but on the whole, I think it’s been hugely democratising. AI could yet be its equal in both positive and negative regards – we will see…