Moneymakers: The skateboarder giving career advice

Entrepreneur Mike Smith is anything but a typical start-up boss. Plus, the "country bumpkin" who made a million; and why would anyone burn £1m?

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"Dressed in a T-shirt and a baseball cap with shoulder length hair," 30-something Mike Smith "is anything but the traditional start-up entrepreneur," says Esha Chhabra for Forbes. "I can't even spell it," he jokes. "I don't build companies to make money. I do them because I get really excited about some issue."

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.