As FuturU celebrates its second birthday, we sat down with David Bernard, CEO, to learn more about our transformation from ambitious startup to profitable business with a community of more than 100,000 learners.
In this article, David gives us a glimpse into a typical day at FuturU, shares his motivations, and outlines his plans for the future as we strive to become the undisputed market leader for online training in the health and social care sector.
What's your role here at FuturU?
I lead the business and our team. The journey over the last year or so has really been about making sure that the business is set up for profitable, sustainable growth.
In reality, that means ensuring we have an offering that works in the market, and then building everything around it – our propositions, our commercial model, our sales team, our marketing engine, our customer & learner experience – to make sure that we can go out to the market and be successful.
Ultimately, we aim to fulfill our ambition to become the universal global learning provider for the health and social care sector, and help fill a major skills gap.
What's your career story?
I studied Maths and Science at university, but I didn’t practice that in my professional career. I went into strategy consulting and then corporate finance. Over the last 20-odd years, I’ve been mainly developing and managing businesses with a tech angle. Technology and digitisation has the power to transform customer experiences, and that’s a big part of my job.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Many meetings! When you lead a business like FuturU, you end up exercising very different skills in different meetings. Day-to-day, I meet with colleagues, trying to move projects along, removing roadblocks and making sure our teams know where to focus their time. And I’ll have conversations with our clients and partners, getting to grips with their needs and then feeding that back to the team. Really, it’s being a jack of all trades, providing the vision and the energy for the team to get there.
How do you like to unwind when you're not at work?
I run 5k every morning, and then run for longer on the weekends. And in the evenings I read. I like to read about history and about languages and the evolution of languages – right now, I’m reading a 700-page book on the history of the Balkans.
What brings you joy at work?
Seeing our team thrive and do great work. I might help the team get started, but then to watch them go and run with it, and smash it, it’s just, wow! That makes me full of pride and joy.
Often our greatest work comes from our biggest challenges. The easy stuff, you don’t really take pride in – sometimes you barely notice it – but the hard stuff is when you reflect back on what you’ve achieved in the last six or twelve months, and think ‘Wow, that was tough, but we did it.’ That’s really what keeps me going.
For instance, last month we became a profitable business and we migrated to our own custom-built, scalable platform. That was a big wow moment.
What motivates you to show up and do a great job?
It’s the desire to do something that’s not easy and will take many months and years to build. I’m not a sprinter – I’m more of a marathon runner. And I like the challenge of working hard over many months and achieving something, solving big problems while ensuring the day-to-day gets better and better too.
Things don’t happen magically overnight – there’s a path we need to follow, and it’s super important we keep the momentum going every day.
As we celebrate FuturU's second birthday, what key milestones are you most proud of?
Hitting 100,000 learners was a key one for me. It’s very significant, and doesn’t just happen by chance. So for me that’s probably number one.
And number two is becoming a viable and sustainable business, which will enable us to grow those 100,000 learners, to 200,000, 300,000 learners – let’s go for the million!
Can you give us a glimpse into FuturU's plans for 2025 and beyond?
For 2025, I want FuturU to be the undisputed market leader for online training in the health and social care sector within the UK, and I want us to go global.
I want FuturU to be able to cater to the needs of the most complex organisations, no matter their size.
And I want to provide such a great learning experience, and such a great client experience, that people will naturally stay with us if they try us. And in order to do that, we need to embrace the power of technology, and specifically AI. The tech exists, and we’re using it to ensure the very best experience for all our users.
What excites you most about the future of FuturU?
There is such a massive need in the health and social care sector for skills and knowledge, and we’re building something that has a real chance to make a huge difference. And that’s very exciting.
I’ve been on client visits where I’ve met with service users and seen firsthand the impact we’re having, directly and indirectly. It really brings things in perspective.
We’re not solving a small problem, we’re making a tangible difference in a sector that really matters.
