Alex Northcott and the unfinished business of the contact book

Before Alex Northcott built a company around journalists, he went looking for customers. At Morgan Stanley in 2003, he had an idea for a database spanning different areas of the press. He took it to about thirty institutions, including banks, insurers and other PR professionals. Twenty-eight said they needed it. For a business concerned with making useful introductions, this was a sensible introduction to business.

The detail is more revealing than a tidy founder legend. There was no need to persuade thirty people that journalism existed, or that press officers wanted coverage. Northcott was asking whether a particular working tool would be useful. The people who might pay for it recognised the problem. Gorkana followed. Years later, after its sale, he would return to that same professional neighbourhood with Roxhill Media.

Twenty-two interviews, then a different question

His own entry into PR had required rather more persistence. Northcott left the military in 1996. After twenty-two interviews, he secured a junior press officer job at JP Morgan. He had served as an officer in the Gurkhas; now he was learning how to make himself useful in a bank’s communications operation. A previous career could give him experience without giving him a ready-made place in this one.

JP Morgan was followed by Morgan Stanley. Both employers put him inside financial communications, close to the practical business of helping an organisation deal with journalists. A reporter’s name and a publication’s title are straightforward pieces of information. Knowing whether that reporter is interested in your subject requires a little more attention. This distinction would become the working territory of his companies.

Northcott’s first ambition for Gorkana was modest enough to fit on a household budget: a business that broke even and paid him a salary. That gives the customer research its proper scale. He was testing whether he could make a living by providing something other people wanted. The larger business came afterwards. Founding stories tend to improve their upholstery over time; this one began with the prospect of covering the bills.

A company with somebody else’s name

Gorkana also carried a connection to the career he had left. It was named after Sergeant Gorkana, who rescued Northcott from a swamp in Borneo during his military service. A piece of PR software thus had a name rooted in a particular act of assistance. It is an unusually personal origin for a product whose daily business involved contact details and professional information.

Northcott built Gorkana with Michael Webster. The company served the PR and journalist communities, providing media intelligence and industry information. In 2010, Durrants agreed to acquire it. The announcement said the founders would remain with the business and retain a small stake. It also set out the prospect of international growth and a broader range of products.

There was a clear industrial logic to the combination. Durrants brought media monitoring and analysis; Gorkana brought intelligence about the people and organisations producing the news. Together, those services could cover more of a communications team’s working day. The acquisition joined information needed before an approach with information useful after a story appeared. For Northcott, it marked the sale of the company he had helped establish.

His later account of leaving Morgan Stanley supplies a less corporate footnote. The resignation that preceded Gorkana earned him two weeks sleeping on the sofa, he recalled in his 2019 career interview. The anecdote puts a domestic price on entrepreneurial enthusiasm. A founder may see an opportunity; a household still has to accommodate the decision.

The return to a familiar desk

Roxhill put Northcott back into media intelligence. Its legal company was incorporated in October 2013; its public launch followed in 2015. That distinction separates the paperwork from the arrival of the business in the market. By then, he knew both the work of a financial press officer and the business of supplying information to one.

Returning meant entering a market that already contained his earlier creation. Gorkana had become part of a larger group. Roxhill would compete for the attention and budgets of communications professionals who might already know Northcott’s first company. There is something pleasantly inconvenient about this career shape: a successful sale did not prevent him from finding another use for the knowledge behind it.

The second venture combined a journalist database with tools for following published work and social activity. Everlution, the engineering business behind the platform, describes search by topic, sector, keyword and company, alongside alerts and the Pinpoint analytics tool. The individual functions all address different parts of the same task: working out whom to approach, understanding their interests and following changes that might make yesterday’s list less useful today.

Experience gives this return its interest, but it does not make the customer’s problem stand still. A database has to keep pace with the people it describes. Reporters move, subjects develop and the meaning of a useful contact changes. A founder can return to a familiar category while finding plenty of work left inside it.

“My simple aim is to offer media relations colleagues a service that meets their needs”

Alex Northcott · LinkedIn profile

Who, what, when - and why bother?

Roxhill’s service description for public-sector buyers sets out the machinery in practical terms. Journalist records can include contact information, written work and social handles. Users can build and curate media lists, search by topic and track responses to distributed releases. The description specifies more than 2,500 topics. Such a system has to organise distinctions that a bare list of names cannot express.

Consider the difference between finding someone at a newspaper and finding someone who has recently written about a particular business question. The first result provides a destination. The second gives a press officer something to read before deciding whether to make contact. This is an illustration of the problem Roxhill addresses, rather than a promise that any particular email will produce coverage. A journalist retains a vote in the proceedings.

That makes Northcott’s business an interesting neighbour to journalism. Its customers work in communications, but its usefulness depends on describing another profession accurately. The software sits between the person with something to say and the person deciding what deserves publication. Both have limited time. Adding information is valuable when it helps either side spend less of that time on an irrelevant exchange.

A classroom attached to the database

The company has also built an editorial operation around the software. Its own recruitment material describes live events, networking sessions, video and written content involving editors and journalists. This gives clients a way to learn about newsroom practice alongside the tools they use to find contacts. A database can identify an editor; a conversation can reveal what that editor wants to discuss.

The guides bearing Northcott’s introductions show the approach at work. Roxhill’s Financial Times guide examines the publication’s operation and sections. His introduction reflects on the demands of producing journalism and the importance of understanding the paper. The subject is familiar territory for a former bank press officer: before seeking space in a publication, learn something about the publication itself.

The BBC business guide gets even more specific. It maps organisational changes, including the move towards Money and Work, a commissioning desk and changes in where teams operate. These are details that matter to someone preparing an approach. An old relationship or a familiar programme name may need to be checked against a reorganised newsroom. The guide treats that checking as part of the job.

There is a human quality to this part of the business. Software can collect and arrange information, while editors can explain the decisions behind the finished page or programme. Roxhill puts both within reach of its customers. Northcott’s company sells access to a working tool and also creates occasions to ask the people represented in it a better question.

Money follows the information

His involvement in the sector extends beyond Roxhill. In October 2015, Northcott invested £350,000 in Signal Media as part of a funding round. The business focused on technology for monitoring news and other information. The investment placed him alongside a company working on a neighbouring part of the communications professional’s problem: following what is being published.

Slipcase supplies another connection. In January 2016, he was identified as an investor and director as the company developed its information platform for the insurance and reinsurance industry. Its service let subscribers follow relevant organisations, publications and topics. The emphasis was on organising business information around the interests of a particular professional audience.

These investments make a useful companion to the operating career. A journalist database, media monitoring and an industry information feed are different products. Each deals with the effort of locating useful material among a much larger supply. Across these documented roles, Northcott has repeatedly worked close to the point where information becomes a practical business service.

The question has acquired new company

His recent public work takes that interest into a more difficult conversation. The 2026 Corporate Affairs Summit lists him as moderator of a panel on misinformation and disinformation, with Charlie Bain of Digitalis, Adrian Cox of Deutsche Bank Research and Addy Frederick of Admiral Group. The agenda asks how AI changes reputational threats and the response available to corporate affairs teams.

That is a wider brief than maintaining a useful contact book. It concerns the reliability and speed of information as well as its destination. Northcott’s participation places the Roxhill founder in a discussion about what communications teams need to understand as the conditions around their work change. The practical question about the needs of colleagues has acquired some demanding new company.

The thirty early customer conversations remain a good place to leave him. They gave Northcott a reason to build his first database. The return with Roxhill put his experience back in front of customers. Between the military, the bank press offices, the acquisition and the second company, the work has repeatedly involved finding out what other people need to know. There are enough names in a contact book. Making them useful is the continuing occupation.