James Silver

Literary Agent: Eugenie Furniss

James Silver is a journalist, author and ghostwriter.

His first book, Upscale: What it takes to scale a start-up, by the people who’ve done it – a series of in-depth interviews with 30 leading UK tech entrepreneurs and investors – was published by Tech Nation in November 2018, with extracts published in The Observer, The Times and WIRED. He has since ghost-written three more books on business, tech and impact investing, including a Wall Street Journal Bestseller.

James’ career began at the BBC where he was a staff producer at BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 4. In 2000, he was part of the team that won a Sony Gold Award for News. He went on to become a reporter, making and presenting over 50 editions of The 5 Live Report, a weekly investigative show described as “consistently excellent” by The Times, and Radio 4’s The Report, as well as editions of Profile, File on 4, and standalone documentaries for Radio 4 and the World Service.

After leaving the BBC, he regularly wrote the Monday media interview in The Guardian, as well as contributing to The Observer, WIRED magazine, Total Politics, The Times, The Independent, The Evening Standard, The Scotsman, Press Gazette, Media Week, TechCrunch, BBC News Online and SkyNews.com. Most recently James has worked as an in-house ghostwriter with some of Europe’s leading technology venture capital firms, including Index Ventures, and as staff Executive Writer and Speechwriter to the CEO at Techstars, the world’s most active early stage tech investor.

Over the course of his career, James has interviewed many big names spanning the worlds of technology, politics, business, media and the arts, including: Kofi Annan (former UN Secretary-General), Margrethe Vestager (Executive VP of the European Commission), Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Alistair Darling, David Lammy, Sir Richard Branson, Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou (EasyJet founder), Reed Hastings (Netflix cofounder), Demis Hassabis (Google DeepMind cofounder), Niklas Zennstrom (Skype cofounder), Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman (LastMinute.com co-founders), Will Shu (Deliveroo founder), Norman Mailer, Clive James, Ian Rankin, Irvine Welsh, Christiane Amanpour (CNN), Carl Bernstein (Watergate reporter), Sir Peter Bazalgette, Sir Max Hastings, Mark Thompson (former BBC Director-General and New York Times CEO), Sir Tony Hall (former BBC Director-General and Royal Opera House CEO), Robert Peston, Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle and Richard & Judy.