An American in Cardiff

The Spectator’s Economic Disruptor of the Year Awards 2019, sponsored by Julius Baer, celebrates innovative businesses throughout the UK that are disrupting their markets and have the potential for rapid growth, nationally and internationally. In the last of our current series of inspirational personal stories behind last year’s finalists, Martin Vander Weyer talks to Chris Ganje, chief executive and co-founder of Cardiff-based Amplyfi, which claims to transform business research through ‘unbiased machine-driven analysis’ of a vast range of internet sources.

I wouldn’t classify myself as a techie,’ says Chris Ganje, in his soft Midwestern accent. That surprises me: when I first met him — company T-shirt, smartphone to hand, talking the abstruse language of the ‘Deep Web’ — I marked him down as an archetypal IT guy. But his personal story turns out to be a more adventurous journey than that label suggests: from childhood in South Dakota and degrees in history and politics, to a first start-up in India; then a foot on the management ladder of an oil giant, and finally running a digital business with global potential from a former tramshed in Cardiff.