Freddie A. Laker

Freddie Allen Laker is a British-American entrepreneur and the founder of the hybrid consulting and marketing services firm Chameleon Collective. Laker has also launched the Internet service provider Laker.net and the digital agency iChameleon Group, and worked at SapientNitro as the company's vice president of global marketing strategy. He is the son of Freddie Laker, the founder of British airline Laker Airways.

Early career

Freddie Laker began his career after dropping out of college and joining his father's company, Laker Airways. The same year, he became a DJ for The Womb, a Miami-based pirate radio station. After being shut down by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the radio station used the Internet to transfer the signal between two antennas, making it the world's first 24-hour Internet radio station.

Following the acquisition, Laker worked on marketing and strategy for digital campaigns for SapientNitro. He later returned to Miami, where he became the company's vice president of global marketing strategy. In 2012, after four years with the company, Laker left to launch Guide. He was the company's chief executive officer. The company has developed a visual newsreader app that uses text-to-speech and avatar technologies to convert written news and blog sources into video. The idea behind the company came to Laker after attending a Consumer Electronics Show in 2011. Unimpressed by the user experience of current Smart TVs, he was motivated to develop an app that provided a TV experience.

In March 2013, Laker attended South by Southwest (SXSW), where Guide was selected as a finalist in the 2013 Accelerator competition. The next month, Laker was selected to present at The Next Web Conference Europe in Amsterdam, where Guide won the second round of the Microsoft BizSpark Startup Rally competition.

Chameleon Collective

In 2015, Laker founded the consulting and executive recruiting firm Chameleon Collective. The company specializes in providing interim executive leadership to Private Equity backed businesses.

Other roles

Laker is a contributor to the online publication PSFK and is also a co-founder of the Society of Digital Agencies, which promotes thought leadership and industry change among digital marketing agencies.

Personal life

Laker is the son of the late Freddie Laker, the founder of Laker Airways, a budget airline company.