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Digitally Peerless
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Amanda Morison speaks to Baroness Martha Lane Fox of Soho, who became famous co-founding lastminute.com in the 90s, and today is a passionate advocate for equal digital access across society
When I speak to Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho (“please call me Martha”) she’s on her way back from the vet with a cat who has, apparently, been peeing all over the house. Said cat photobombed a BBC Radio4 Today interview (peeing and interview not related), leading to a feature later in the week with a pet psychologist who helped explain why the nation’s pets are on red alert the second a Zoom ‘you’re on mute, Derek’ hones into view. Given the number of roles Martha juggles – among them non exec director of Chanel, board member of Twitter and Crossbench Peer in the House of Lords – how does she sound so calm? She’s also the mother of four-year-old twins. Wonderwoman?
She explains that the lockdowns have made her time easier to manage than usual. Following a serious car accident in 2004 Martha walks with ‘two sticks’ and is registered disabled. Not having to be out and about as much has proved a positive in some ways. She’s taken on two significant roles, at WeTransfer and chairing the Lord’s Select Committee on Covid – and says it’s strange not to be able to meet new colleagues. “You lose the element of being able to read people“. Zoom fatigue is something most can relate to, and Martha also identifies how hard she finds it to compartmentalise. “Something might be going wrong – or right – with the children downstairs, and it’s difficult to be upstairs working”. However, she also identifies how fabulous it is to have an afternoon when they can all build a crazy Lego structure together.
As a passionate advocate for democratising technology, Martha believes that if we have seen anything in the last year it’s that we’ve gone through five years of digitisation at speed. “If you’d told me that I’d be voting on
my phone in the House of Lords I’d have said you were smoking crack, but it happened within one month of lockdown”. She argues that progress has revealed inequalities, not least for kids and schooling. Having worked in this area a long time she says it’s not a “sexy bit of tech, but it matters“. And she’s clearly frustrated with progress, arguing that solutions are not complicated – get good hardware and software into homes, and the skills to use it. “The digital world is not an option. Some have benefitted, others haven’t. It’s no surprise that digital poverty is linked to actual poverty. Families have been choosing between buying food or topping up data. “
Is she glad her career has been about technology and entrepreneurship? “Yes. It changed my life.” Though she says she’s not, in fact, very good at tech: “I’m not a technologist but I have a fundamental understanding and curiosity about technology”. It’s this, and her experience building an online business, that helps her ask good questions about the future of society – “Without trying to sound too grand!” – and makes her a useful person to have on a board. She’s also passionate about the role of the Open University, for which she is chancellor. “It’s an incredible digital organisation that realised early on that tech was going to be the enabler for people to have a different experience of learning”.
Is Britain a good place for entrepreneurs? “It’s better than it was when I was co-founding lastminute.com, when we were roundly mocked. But she argues that Britain is not as effective at scaling up businesses as in starting them, and that the lack of diversity is an issue. “It’s about gender, class, race
MARTHA LANE FOX
how it all happened…
1989 A-Levels at Westminster School 1992 Reads Ancient and Modern History at Magdalen College, Oxford 1998 Co-founds lastminute.com with Brent Hoberman 2003 Leaves lastminute.com 2004 Life-changing car crash in Morocco 2007 Board Member M&S 2009-2013 Works as UK’s Digital Champion 2013 Appointed CBE in the New Year Honours for ‘services to the digital economy and charity’. Assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the United Kingdom by Woman’s Hour. Becomes the youngest female member of the House of Lords 2014 Appointed Chancellor of the Open University 2016 Joins the board of Twitter. Elected a Distinguished Fellow of BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT, after being nominated by the Duke of Kent 2017 Appointed a member of the Joint Committee on National Security Strategy 2018 Appointed Non-Executive Director of Chanel. Becomes a Trustee of The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust 2019 Named most influential woman in digital of the past 25 years by The Drum, in association with the Futures Network, InnovateHer and WACL 2020 Chairs the panel for the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020-2021 Chairs the Lord’s Select Committee on Covid
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From left: At the 50th anniverary at the Open University, as an ambassador for climate change at Talanoa Dialogue for climate ambition, offering her wisdom at ‘If I Could Give You One Piece of Advice’, an event by The School of Life
and ethnic background. Those giving out and receiving funding are shockingly white, male, middleclass and metropolitan-centric”. This is partly why she was so interested in becoming a trustee at The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust. “Anything with Royal money can give young people the backing of the establishment.”
Other organisations in Martha’s portfolio include non-executive director at Chanel and board member at Twitter. She says privately owned Chanel is fascinating to someone used to working with public companies. “It’s an iconic brand. I’m certainly not a typical consumer, but the symbolism and leadership Chanel can bring to issues is very important, particularly around sustainability and climate change. And I can’t imagine a company more different to Silicon Valley, publicly owned, and very loud Twitter.”
I ask if she has any reading tips following being Chair of the Women’s Prize for Fiction 2020. She laughs and says having read 60 novels by women it’s ironic that two of the books currently on her bedside are by men. The Overstory by Richard Powers and George Saunders’ A Swim in the Pond in the Rain. She’s a great fan of poetry. “You can dip in and take something from it in 15 minutes“. She recommends poetryfoundation.org - “it’s wonderful, masses there” and she’s reading a lot of Adrienne Rich.
The best piece of advice she’s been given was as part of a chairing role. Things weren’t going right, and she asked someone for honest feedback. “It was bruising to the ego to hear I wasn’t listening, but I’d been trying to bring people with me instead of thinking whether people wanted to come with me. My goal should have been to facilitate everyone to go in the direction they wanted to go in.”
The piece of advice she’d like to pass on is based on her own experiences of having a hinterland. She describes herself as a generalist and isn’t a fan of the notion that an entrepreneur has to be about product 24/7. “Have other interests. Read widely, go to the theatre, volunteer. Other aspects to your life add immeasurably to the whole and will make you better at whatever you want to do.”
