Martin Ritchie is active in the development of young technology companies as a business angel, as a director, and through his support of business growth initiatives. He is a former founder and Managing Director of Spider Systems which was one of Scotland’s first successful technology businesses.  Spider grew to employ 250 staff with revenues of £25 million before being acquired by the US Shiva Corp in 1995 for $100 million.  He is currently chairman of Spinsight and previously has chaired Stortext, Pentland Systems, Scapa Technologies, Sirius Seven Software, Chameleon Trust plc and has served on the boards of ION Networks (US NASDAQ quoted company) and Voxar.

He was the founding chairman of Connect and has served on the boards of the Scottish Institute for Enterprise and Systems Level Integration Ltd, and is currently part of the Entrepreneurs in Residence programme at the University of Edinburgh’s Informatics centre.  In 2000, he received an OBE for services to computing and business in Scotland.

He has been on the board of Falkirk Football Club since 1998 and is in his second period as chairman of the club.  He is a Council member of the Scottish Football Association.