Martin Montague

Martin Montague (born 1977) in Portsmouth, UK is an entrepreneur and author.

Early life and education

Martin Montague grew up on several council estates near Portsmouth including Leigh Park, and later Purbrook where he attended Oaklands Roman Catholic School in Waterlooville. He left school with no formal qualifications as he suffers from dyslexia, but despite this, he went on to write extensively about his impoverished childhood in his 2017 book The Reservation.

Career

Martin Montague started his career as a trainee car salesman in Portsmouth before getting a job as an estate agent. He took evening classes to help with his dyslexia before getting a job with Prudential PFPS as an executive consultant. By the time the company had made its entire direct sales force redundant, he was in the top three sales consultants in the country out of 6,000 staff.

In 1999 he was looking to start a virtual and scalable online business and came up with the idea to sell ringtones on the Internet. After a slow start the idea took off and they ended up being the first-ever business to advertise ringtones on television. After the lifecycle for this product finished he started a new software company Symbios Solutions Ltd, which develops revenue optimisation and machine learning technology, servicing more than 3.5m users worldwide.

Other companies he founded included a surfwear company that he sold in 2016. He also purchased a distressed bike light manufacturer and invented and patented an accelerometer powered brake light that was subsequently sold in Halfords before the company was later sold.

ClearWaste

Martin Montague came up with the idea for ClearWaste as he was appalled at the level of fly-tipping that he would see, and was disgusted at the cost to the taxpayer to clean it up. He spent over £250,000 of his own money developing the App to help combat the problem.