Digital products Operational systems AI in the real economy
Most companies know exactly what they want. Almost none of them know how to build it.
I'm Sam Furr. Fifteen years a CEO, product strategist and operator. Boards, leadership teams and founders bring me the product that doesn't exist yet, or the operation that only half works. I do the rest.
The record
Since 2011: designing systems for businesses that make, move and sell real things, and running the studio that builds them.
- 2011 Origin
- Started Tappable on Be Your Own Boss, Richard Reed's BBC Three series. I still run it.
- 2013 to 2015 European retail
- Built footfall and retention models on mobile gaming for European retailers.
- 2018 to 2020 Healthcare
- Innovation team at Illingworth Research Group, helping digitise their services through to the $80m acquisition by Syneos Health. Six years on they still hire me, which I have chosen to believe is related.
- 2019 Entertainment
- Founded a live entertainment tech startup that went on to raise £3m from ITV.
- 2025 Retail supply chain
- Designed the paperless quality control system used in the M&S Food supply chain. The founders could describe exactly what it had to do and had no idea how to make it do it. I turned the description into the working system, and what shipped is what they described. Backed it as an investor too.
- 2011 to now UK SMEs
- Designed and delivered operational tools and paperless systems into SMEs across the UK. Too many to count, which is rather the point.
- Ongoing Startups
- Mentoring and coaching more than ten founders on their way into tech: raising money, choosing what to build first, and the decisions that arrive with a first technical team.
- Ongoing Investing
- I back founders at pre‑seed under SEIS, usually people I already know. Sometimes cash, sometimes time and development resource for equity.
- 2026 Boards
- On the steering board of BedX, the business‑led group backed by Bedfordshire Chamber of Commerce that is getting local firms ready to win work on the £5bn Universal resort at Bedford and the £2.5bn expansion of Luton Airport.
- Ongoing Speaking
- Keynotes and sessions on AI in the real economy, paperless operations and product strategy. Plain English, built for rooms of operators who have a business to run. Most recently the Leaders Lounge launch, Milton Keynes, September 2026.
- Throughout
- Co‑founder and CEO of Tappable since 2011: a software studio of twenty‑odd people, more than fifty products shipped, and AI now in every build. Everything above happened while running it.
Why it goes wrong
Fifteen years of this, and the technology is almost never the reason it failed.
The projects that die were bought before anyone decided what they were for. Right now that is AI: plenty of it is being bought because it is called AI, not because anyone can say what it will do. The half that is worth having would have been called automation five years ago, and nobody needed persuading to want that. AI makes it faster and it makes it better. It does not answer the question you have to answer first. I've gone a long way down this rabbit hole so your team doesn't have to.
Adoption beats software
A system nobody uses is just a cost. The hard part was never the build, it was designing around how people actually work.
The busy work goes first
The real effect on an operating business is time and headroom. What you spend that on is the decision worth getting right.
A bet, not a wish‑list
Most roadmaps are every request anyone ever made, in a row. A strategy is the few things you will actually fund.
What I do
01
Product strategy
You can describe what you want. My job is the how: what the thing actually is, what it does first, what it never does, and what it costs to find out. Bought as a fixed piece of work, usually two to four weeks, priced up front, with something you can react to by the end of the first week. This is the work I am best at.
02
Fractional and interim
Sometimes the plan needs someone in the seat. I take fractional and interim roles running product or operations inside a business, one to three days a week, for as long as it takes to hand it over properly. Paperless workflows, operational tools, the spreadsheet the whole company secretly depends on. If the work needs a team, I bring Tappable, the studio I run. If it doesn't, it's just me.
03
Advisory and boards
Retained or board‑level. A retainer is a fixed session every fortnight, with me on the end of the phone in between, for as long as it's useful. A board seat is the same judgement, applied at the table, with the papers read. I take the problem as you describe it, reframe it, and give you the plan with the call already made and the reasoning left in so you can argue with it.
How I work
I tell people the truth
I don't say yes when the answer is no, and I don't ride the hype train. If the plan is wrong, you'll hear it from me first.
I ask the awkward questions
I prod in places you didn't expect. That's usually where the real problem lives, and the real potential too.
I don't do six‑week discovery
No phase that bills for a month and ends in a slide deck. You get something you can look at and react to early, because that is when your opinion is worth the most.
Fast beats slow
I move quickly because slow has never once been the safer option. Waiting for certainty costs more than a wrong call that gets fixed the same week.
Let's talk.
A product that only exists in your head, an operation that half works, or a board that needs a straight answer. One conversation is usually enough to tell whether I can help, and if I can't, I'll say so.