Lay member profile

Oliver Sidwell is a Geography & Business Management 2007 graduate and won the Loughborough University Business Plan Competition in 2007 with three friends from Telford Hall. The £1.5k seed funding built the first version of a website, RateMyPlacement.co.uk which he co-founded after his experiences on placement during his sandwich year at Loughborough.

Ollie still runs and has grown RateMyPlacement.co.uk from his back-bedroom, to a team of 50 in Brixton, London and employs seven Loughborough graduates within the business, which inspires students to take the first steps in their career and is known as 'the TripAdvisor for placements'. Ollie heads up the Marketing, Commercial, Digital, Finance & HR teams, presents two annual Awards ceremonies and also co-hosts The Jack & Ollie Show | The Early Careers Podcast.

Ollie also co-founded Akkroo.com, an event lead capture business which in 2019 was acquired for $34m by US software firm Integrate.com and in his spare time Ollie runs cricket tours for Telford Hall alumni and works closely with WWF raising money through running as an official Tiger Protector.