Dion Price is CEO of Trustonic, the UK-headquartered company whose device-locking software lets carriers, retailers and financiers sell smartphones on instalments to customers who could not otherwise afford them.
Formed in 2012 as a joint venture between ARM, Gemalto and G&D and now backed by EMK Capital, the company says its platform has protected more than 350 million devices.
In March 2026 it published research with Mobile World Live at MWC Barcelona in which 48 per cent of the operators, financiers and retailers surveyed named better customer retention as the main benefit of device financing. He tells Business Matters why overlooked value appeals to him, and why two out of three is a trap.
What do you currently do at Trustonic?
I am the CEO of Trustonic, the world’s largest smartphone restriction and ultimately locking company, protecting hundreds of millions of devices in over 40 countries.
What was the inspiration behind your business?
A staggering 3 billion people worldwide still do not have a smartphone. Closing this gap is one of the greatest challenges, and opportunities, of our time. The smartphone is the most powerful tool for economic, educational and healthcare access the emerging world has ever seen.
But affordability remains the biggest barrier by far. We work with retailers, financiers and carriers to provide secure, flexible financing options, allowing underserved populations the ability to participate in the digital economy.
By breaking the upfront cost into manageable regular payments, all underpinned by our technology to mitigate the risk of defaulting on handset payment instalments, we are making real progress in bridging the digital divide.
Who do you admire?
No one person, but creative and determined operators rather than pure visionaries. Vision is cheap and widely distributed. The rarer thing is somebody who does the unglamorous work for a decade to really move the ball forward, not just repeat cyclical tasks day in, day out.
No one person is perfect. Learn from those around you, from broad history and specifically from those that have gone before you, not holistically but selectively. Absorb what is useful for your particular situation and unique skill set and reject what is not, and you will be well on the way to building yourself into a facsimile of someone that others may wish to emulate elements of in the future.
Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?
Of course, but regret is usually a waste of time. Learning the lessons and applying them moving forward is what counts, but not in a rigid way.
Different companies at different points in their journey need different styles of leadership, so you need to know when to change gear in certain areas while being aware that the “brilliant basics” have to remain the foundation of what you do. Being customer obsessed never goes out of fashion, for example.
What defines your way of doing business?
I am usually quite drawn to overlooked value. Not necessarily what people have analysed and rejected, but what looks too hard or too high-stakes at first glance to most. A few simple things make delivering on those opportunities much easier.
The universe rewards action, not intention. If people spent as much time building a plan for how something could work as they do describing the caveats and the reasons it will not, we would all make far more progress. The reflex to explain difficulty is very natural, but it does not move the ball forward. As is often said, “if you think you can or you think you cannot, you are going to be right”.
You can have anything you want, as long as you work out how to give enough people what they want first. Giving people what they want is usually a creativity problem and an empathy problem rather than an effort problem. Work out carefully what the person across the table actually needs, find the route to it, and deliver relentlessly. Do that repeatedly and you become known as a safe pair of hands that can be trusted with the hard or high-stakes things.
When I joined Trustonic, it was that sort of puzzle: good technology pointed at the wrong commercial problem. With the product reconfigured, a new commercial model and a partnership-first approach, we generated solid traction.
Your greatness is in the agency of others. Attribute less of your “greatness” to your intellect and reallocate it to the team around you. You will be able to attract and retain a great team by delivering well and keeping your reputation intact across your career.
Great people have a choice in where they work, so you have to be the sort of person people recommend when you are not in the room. Great people will come from your own network and one or two degrees of separation away. The team is everything.
Net net: action, empathy, agency.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
Again, everyone is different and has different measurements of success, but most people want to do something they are good at, something they enjoy and something the world values. They also want to do that in a dynamic and interesting environment. And to really love it you need to feel a degree of autonomy, mastery and purpose over the long term.
This is a wish list and you will not get it all right all of the time, but start with the end in mind. Practically, then, draw three overlapping circles on a page.
Circle one is what you are good at. Figure this out, but be aware that you will often undervalue or be blind to this. You will initially think everyone is good at whatever comes easily to you; your own superpowers often read to you as a hygiene factor. So ask other people, repeatedly, “what am I good at?”, keep a record and note what comes up time and again.
Circle two is what you enjoy. Keep a rough note for a few weeks or months of what gives you energy and what drains it. These can be small or big things, but pay attention and patterns will emerge.
Circle three is what the world will pay for. This one is the market’s opinion rather than yours, but it is easy to see what skills are valued and what the market is paying for right now, or will always pay for.
Target the jobs and industries where all three overlap, but remember two out of three is a trap. Good at it and well paid but not enjoying it is golden handcuffs. Enjoying it and good at it with nobody paying is a hobby.
Then get yourself into the right pool. Being in the top one per cent at a mediocre organisation in a boring industry is worth less than being in the top 30 per cent at a great company in an exploding market.
Finally, once you are there, deliver relentlessly and always put your hand up for new, interesting or difficult projects until you are known as a safe pair of hands. And keep checking that you are building towards autonomy, mastery and purpose.
You will not always get this right and it can take a long time. Be kind to yourself. Hang in there.
