Volker Hirsch has lived several technology lifetimes in one career.

In Part One of this two-part episode of The Digital Forge, David Richards MBE sits down with Volker to trace an extraordinary journey that begins in German law firms and runs straight through the first mobile revolution, the rise of social gaming, and the peak of BlackBerry’s dominance.

Volker left a successful legal career to join one of the world’s first mobile-only incubators in 2000, helping launch some of the earliest mobile fan clubs and games long before smartphones existed. He went on to help build Scoreloop, growing it to more than 450 million users, before the company was acquired by BlackBerry, where he worked from the inside as the company tried and failed to reinvent itself.

This episode is about timing, conviction and being close enough to history to see how giants rise and fall. Volker explains what BlackBerry got right, what it misunderstood, and why execution mattered more than technology.

And then the story takes a turn.

Part One ends with Volker recounting the night he was arrested and held in a Maltese jail for four hours, accused of money laundering in the fallout of a collapsing mobile incubator. What happened next changed the direction of his life and career.

Part Two continues the story.

If you want to understand how early mobile really worked, why BlackBerry lost its grip on the world, and how chaos can become a catalyst, this is where it begins.

Tim Craggs is building technology that could change how we understand disease.

In this episode of The Digital Forge, David Richards MBE sits down with Tim Craggs, founder and CEO of Exciting Instruments, a University of Sheffield spin-out developing a new generation of tools for single-molecule research.

What once required vast, expensive machines in specialist labs can now sit on a benchtop. That shift matters. Tim explains how being able to observe single molecules in action opens the door to earlier disease detection, better drug discovery, and eventually new ways of tackling conditions like Parkinson’s.

But this is not just a story about science. It is a story about conviction and risk. Tim talks candidly about funding the business through customer sales before raising capital, scaling a deep-tech team at speed, and moving from academic research into global commercial markets in pharma and biotech.

We explore what it takes to build hard technology in the UK, why first-principles science still matters, and how Sheffield is quietly producing tools that could help reshape modern medicine.

This is a conversation about patience, precision, and building technology that may one day help cure diseases we still struggle to understand.

In this episode of The Digital Forge Podcast, David Richards MBE sits down with Dan Ridsdale, Head of Technology, Media and Telecoms at Edison Group, to get inside the mind of the modern tech investor. After more than 25 years analysing listed technology companies and working with management teams across the UK and Europe, Dan has a rare view of what really moves markets - and what does not.

This conversation goes beyond valuation jargon and earnings calls. Dan and David unpack how investors actually build conviction, why some founders cut through while others never get noticed, and what a compelling “equity story” looks like from the other side of the table. They dig into the state of UK public markets, why ambitious growth companies so often feel overlooked, and what needs to change if Britain is serious about backing its own tech and industrial champions.

In this episode, they explore:

• How a career in telecoms software and market analysis led Dan into equity research

• What institutional investors really look for in a tech or industrial company

• The biggest mistakes founders make when pitching to the market

• How to tell a clear, credible growth story that resonates with investors

• The challenges and opportunities for UK-listed tech and industrial businesses today

• Practical advice for northern and regional companies trying to attract serious capital

A candid, practical guide for founders, CFOs, and anyone who wants to understand how investors think before they step into the City.