Who we are
An industrialist with 35 years of experience across software, embedded electronics, entertainment lighting, fabless semiconductors, and semiconductor manufacturing technology. His pattern across five founded companies is consistent: identify a constraint the industry treats as permanent, determine whether it is physics or process, and remove it — rebuilding at a deeper layer of the stack each time.
Prior companies include MAD Lighting — built from a garage to £7M turnover with a successful exit — and Verdi Semiconductors, a fabless LED company that attracted a PwC-led M&A process. SFN's IP estate spans 114 granted and pending patents — 68 granted — across 17 invention families in 24 territories, with 18 registered trademarks.
Sam Lodh is a solicitor with more than 26 years of corporate law experience, advising boards, management teams, and shareholders across a broad range of industries — from publicly listed companies to owner-managed businesses. His career has spanned corporate transactions, governance, commercial structuring, and the legal frameworks that underpin investment and growth, giving him an understanding not just of how businesses are built, but of the commercial and operational realities that determine whether they succeed.
As Co-Founder and COO of Search For The Next, Sam is also engaged with the strategic and commercial dimensions of the company's development.
An experienced company chairman and entrepreneur, having founded and run substantial high-tech healthcare businesses in Europe and India. Charles brings a track record of building and scaling technology companies to SFN's board.
A semiconductor veteran with over 45 years of experience in design, sales and business development leadership — driving revenue growth and strategic partnerships across power, analogue, mixed-signal, ASIC/SoC, wireless and automotive markets.
Most recently Sales & Business Development Manager for Allegro Microsystems, where he grew several key accounts from zero to multi-million-dollar revenue. Earlier senior roles at Atmel, Microchip, VLSI Technology, Impartic (which he co-founded) and GEC Plessey. He has helped launch Bluetooth solutions, was a driving force in helping secure Arm's first-ever licence deal, and has delivered consistent double-digit growth across the industrial, metering, lighting and IoT sectors.
Since the company was founded, Barry has supported the distributed factory network, developing commercial strategy, customer acquisition and partnership development for the company's semiconductor platform and self-improving hardware technology. A passionate advocate for British semiconductor sovereignty, he brings deep key-account relationships, proven sales methodologies and an entrepreneurial track record to help scale the technology globally.
barry@wafertrain.co.uk
+44 7900 652685