A coffee with: Laurence Bargery ☕
This is the first of a new series of blogs sitting down for a coffee with Accurx’s senior leaders — the B Team. To kick off, I caught up with our co-founder and Chief Technical Officer, Laurence Bargery. Laurence and I chatted about everything from behavioural science and going to a working class school to the importance of not resting on past successes. Read on to find out more!
1. So Laurence, how would you describe yourself in three words?
Energetic, values-driven and pragmatic.
2. And what’s a fact that most people don’t know about you?
Well, I went to a pretty working class school. That’s something that lots of people wouldn’t necessarily know about me. My family home was middle class and I later got to go to a great university, but growing up I also saw how tough life could be for a lot of people. I had a really strong insight into what life, and society, can be for a lot of more disadvantaged people. So I feel very lucky that I’ve had the chance to see into both worlds in that sense.
People who’ve worked with me through our diversity and inclusion activities at Accurx might know that that’s where some of my drive comes from. To be honest, that’s actually part of the reason I started this company with Jacob. If I hadn’t had that part of my life, I’d have been more likely to go into something like banking.
I feel like if you’re fortunate enough to break out of an environment where people are disadvantaged, it’s really important that you then go and spend your time well.
3. How would you describe your job to someone?
So, I often feel like I wear two different hats day to day. I have a Chief Technical Officer (CTO) hat and a co-founder hat.
As the company’s CTO, I look after everything from IT, security and engineering to discussing the whats and hows of our product. The co-founder hat is more about being a general firefighter for the business and helping enrich our people and culture. It ebbs and flows as to which of those roles takes up more of my time.
The cofounder hat also has more highs and lows to it. It can cause me the biggest headaches and negative emotion because sometimes the firefighting can be draining. But then again, it’s also the thing I get most energy and positivity out of because I love working on the business, our culture and people.
6. What are you most proud of from your time at Accurx?
Without a doubt, the impact that we have. Take our vaccine programme. We built all the infrastructure that was needed, and did it quickly. And I mean infrastructure in terms of both technical infrastructure and people too. It was an incredibly challenging period, but looking back it’s the thing that I certainly feel most proud of. Helping deliver 30 odd million vaccines definitively saved lives.
I also feel incredibly proud of the people side of the business. I had coffee with someone in the office recently, and they were just a really talented, likeable person and seemed so happy here. It was such a lovely moment in my week. I thought: ‘wow, this person could’ve picked almost any company to work at and has chosen to spend their professional career here.’ It was humbling, and a great reminder of the calibre of people at Accurx. Not to mention how nice people are. That’s almost the thing I’m most proud of today. We have a culture where people are genuinely happy to put their team over themselves — and that’s what we look for in candidates.
We’re talking about achievements, but to tell you the truth I don’t like focusing too much on past successes. In fact, I often worry about us becoming complacent as a company. I still think we’ve got a long way to go before we properly achieve our vision. Fortunately, that’s a very natural and healthy thing for a cofounder to feel. It’s like that saying — you climb one hill, and you see a bigger one up ahead. Part of my, and part of Jacob’s, job is to instil that feeling in people across the company.
7. What are you most excited about at Accurx over the next six months?
I’m very excited by the goal of increasing our adoption in secondary care and turning the promising metrics we see into user growth. That’s going to be tough but it’s definitely a thrilling challenge.
I’m also really excited by our behavioural change work. It’s an area I’m fairly new to, but one that we’re starting to invest in more and more. The reason Jacob and I got into this work was because we wanted to make staff’s lives easier and patients’ lives healthier. It’s incredibly exciting to think about the role behavioural change can play in that mission.
8. What do you like doing outside work?
Lots of things! I like spending time with friends, going for a beer, watching sport (mostly cricket, snooker, football, rugby, F1, tennis) and just generally enjoying London life. I’m also into my exercise — particularly gym classes and running. Exercise is one of the key things I need to do to feel like myself. I’m a big foody so enjoy going out to restaurants together and making food at home.
9. Dream dinner party — which three guests do you invite?
Well, I think Emmy Noether is amazing. She discovered one of the most fundamental theorems in Physics in the late 1800s and almost no one knows her name.
Another would be Lewis Hamilton. I only got into F1 recently (after a classic COVID activity of watching Drive to Survive) and obviously it would be interesting to chat to someone who is at the top of their sporting game, but in particular I admire Lewis because he’s quite outspoken compared to most sports stars on societal issues.
The third person would have to be someone like Gordon Brown. It’d be fascinating to get an insight into their thinking and the degree of pragmatism involved in their policymaking. I’d be curious to know how much of a gap there is between their outward policies compared to what they inwardly believe.
10. If you weren’t working at Accurx, what job would you be doing?
I’m quite politically engaged so I think there’d be a strong chance I’d work in some sort of public institution. Whether that would be in government or for a think-tank is anyone’s guess. If not this then I’d be keen to do something around sustainability — because I think it’s the biggest problem we have to solve as a species!
Interested in working at Accurx? Check out our careers page for the latest roles.
