Speakers

Amy Abbott Director, Events, BVCA Amy Abbott is the BVCA's Director of Events. Prior to joining the BVCA in 2012, she was Head of Events & Awards at the Royal Academy of Engineering where she led a small team of event managers to deliver a highly regarded programme of events for the engineering fellowship comprising eminent chartered engineers, business leaders and Royal patrons. During her nine years at the Academy Amy was secretary to several awards committees including the prestigious MacRobert Award; involving events at Buckingham Palace. She also played a fundamental part in the launch of the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering where she was responsible for the launch event involving the former three party leaders. She has a BA Hons in Business and Marketing from Oxford Brookes University.

Amelia Armour Partner, Amadeus Capital Partners Amelia joined Amadeus Capital Partners in 2009 and is a Partner in the Early Stage Fund. She is a Director on several boards including Xampla, who have developed a plant-based material to replace single-use plastics; Paragraf who are manufacturing graphene-based electronic devices; Riverlane a developer of an operating system for quantum computers and SLAMcore, a spin-out from Imperial College, developing spatial intelligence for autonomous robots and drones. Prior to Amadeus, she worked at Barclays Investment Bank and at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. She qualified as a chartered accountant with Deloitte and holds a BSc in Chemistry and Biology from Durham University.

Kerry Baldwin Managing Partner, IQ Capital Kerry co-founded IQ Capital in 2006 and has over 20 years deeptech venture capital experience. Kerry was Chair of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association 2021/22 and is an international advisor and speaker on venture capital, deeptech ecosystems, research and innovation. Originally with BDO Stoy Hayward, she joined Venture Technologies in 1998, investing in the first wave of UK deeptech companies and has focussed on deeptech early-stage technology over her five funds which invest from seed to £30m.

Kerry specialises in GTM, Strategic Marketing, Competitive Intelligence and heads up IQ’s cybersecurity, climate tech, supervisory tech, big data and neuro-tech portfolio. She sits on several boards including Risilience, FNA, CyberSmart, BMLL Technologies, CybSafe, Divido, Neurovalens and Worldr and has conducted several exits and IPOs.

She is known as a contributor to best practice in venture capital, from ESG and a 2018 in-depth study on Investment Committee best practice and decision making across Private Equity and Venture Capital. She is an honorary Fellow in Entrepreneurship at the University of Cambridge (Judge Business School).

Shane Barry-Lyons Principal, Kreos Capital Shane joined Kreos in 2019 and is responsible for deal sourcing, execution, and monitoring. Shane is predominantly focused on tech transactions, including tech enabled roll-ups, consumer, and fintech. Prior to Kreos, Shane worked in the investment team at LGT Private Debt, a European midmarket debt fund, and Lloyds Banking Group. Shane has a BA in English and Philosophy from the University of Nottingham, a diploma in Economics from the University of Warwick and is a CFA Charterholder.

Ravi Bhatt Director, Responsible Investment, Apis Ravi has spent much of his career within Financial Services and FinTech, both in an advisory and investment context. At Apis he is responsible for the social impact focus of Apis’ investment mandate and for ensuring that portfolio companies adhere to solid ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.

Prior to joining Apis, Ravi worked on early-stage investments as well as strategy and buy-side M&A transactions at Anthemis Group and Nomura.

Maria Carradice Managing Director, Specialist – ESG, Mayfair Equity Partners Maria joined Mayfair in 2015 to work alongside portfolio companies to identify, quantify and unlock business process improvement activities. Maria’s expertise as both a former practitioner and consultant allows her to focus on opportunities to drive incremental value in areas such as tax, ESG and finance with the aim of supporting the teams Mayfair partners with to deliver their plans faster or with less risk.

Richard Colbert CFO, Monica Vinader Richard Colbert has been the CFO of Monica Vinader Ltd since 2018. Pioneers of the affordable luxury jewellery category, Monica Vinader has grown to a global omnichannel retailer offering timeless jewellery to women who want something wearable, long-lasting and a little different – beautiful and affordable pieces every woman can buy for herself and style 100% her way. Their designs are regularly worn by the likes of Bella Hadid, Olivia Palermo and the Duchess of Cambridge.

Prior to joining MV, Richard worked at L’Oreal in finance leadership roles, both in the UK and in global roles based in Paris.

He is an expert at unlocking profitable growth in FMCG, Retail and Luxury sectors.

Ian Connatty Managing Director, Direct and Co-investments, British Patient Capital Ian joined British Patient Capital from the British Business Bank, which he joined at its formation in late 2014. Prior to that, he was part of the Bank’s predecessor, Capital for Enterprise Ltd. He brings with him a wealth of experience, including close involvement in the development of the Venture Capital Catalyst and Enterprise Capital Funds portfolios which have invested in 41 funds to date, facilitating more than £1bn of investment in over 400 smaller businesses.

He previously worked in corporate finance at technology company Infinity SDC and in financial modelling at the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Jack Eadie Partner, Downing Ventures Jack joined Downing in June 2020 to help build out the Downing Ventures business. Jack came from Next47, a $1B VC fund backed by Siemens, where he focused on DeepTech and Enterprise globally across Series A to D. Prior to Next47, he worked at Eight Roads Ventures, Fidelity’s proprietary VC fund, focusing on Enterprise software Series A and B in Europe. Jack started his investing career at Goldman Sachs in Global Investment Research within the healthcare and mid-cap technology sectors. Jack started his entrepreneurial journey at home in Devon where he learnt early on the power of a local marketplace and community. Jack holds a BSc in Economics from the University of Bath.

Stephen Edwards Co-Managing Partner, Soho Square Capital Stephen leads Soho Square’s investment activities. Prior to Soho Square, he co-founded the private equity firm Core Capital in 2004 and has over 25 years’ experience in investing in SME’s.

Stephen was formerly Managing Director at Beringea Private Equity and a Director of Hg Capital and Grosvenor.

He is a Chartered Accountant and started his career at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in London working in Corporate Finance where he spent six years advising on numerous private equity transactions.

Stephen has led, managed or arranged over 25 transactions and is a board member of several portfolio companies.

He has a BA (Hons) Economics, Durham University, and is an ACA (ICAEW).

Chris Elphick Policy Manager, Venture Capital, BVCA Chris is responsible for the BVCA’s policy engagement on venture capital and works closely with BVCA members to promote the role the industry plays in the UK economy by supporting entrepreneurs and businesses. He is on the advisory board for the All Party Parliamentary Group for Entrepreneurship and during his time at the BVCA he has contributed to a wide range of consultations and reports, including the Patient Capital and Khalifa reviews. In his previous role at the BVCA he led on personal and corporate tax policy and worked closely with the BVCA Taxation Committee.

Gilad Engel Partner, Target Global Gilad joined Target in 2017 as a Partner focused on the firm's deeptech portfolio which includes Ermetic and Seekret. He also sits on the board and serves as an advisor to Plessey Semiconductors, XMOS, and CP Display, which was acquired by a leading US corporation last year.

Over the past two decades, he has held a wide range of business development roles at M-Systems (acquired by SunDisk), Anobit (acquired by Apple) and Elastify (acquired by Google). Gilad was also an early advisor to Pliops, which has grown to become one of the leading semiconductor companies in Israel, and Cyvera, a cybersecurity company (acquired by Palo Alto Networks).

Gilad is an active angel investor with a portfolio of more than 80 companies across Israel, the UK, France, Italy and the US. He's a graduate of Bar Ilan University with a BSc in Computer Science, Economics, and Math and served as an officer in the The Israel Defense Forces.

Judith Hartley CEO, British Patient Capital Judith is Chief Executive Officer of the British Business Bank’s two commercial subsidiaries, British Business Investments and British Patient Capital, and took up the role on 1 September 2020. Judith previously held the position of Managing Director of the Bank’s UK Network, a team that is physically located within each of the English regions and the three Devolved Nations.

Judith built a career in corporate banking with Barclays and Bank of Scotland before becoming involved in the delivery of publicly funded access to finance products. Judith was previously the British Business Bank’s Managing Director, Lending Solutions, where she was responsible for the delivery of a number of the Bank’s debt- based products, including the Enterprise Finance Guarantee, Help to Grow and Start Up Loans. Judith joined the Bank from Capital for Enterprise where she was Managing Director, Debt Markets.

Damien Henault Partner, TempoCap Damien joined TempoCap in 2019 bringing more than two decades of international experience as technology investor, M&A advisor, Strategy & Corporate Development executive and entrepreneur. Damien has executed over $250 billion in M&A, IPOs and financing transactions with both start-ups and Global Fortune 500 companies.

Before TempoCap, Damien was a partner at early-stage venture capital firm Andurance Ventures, focusing on Enterprise Cloud (SaaS, IaaS, PaaS), Business Intelligence, Analytics and Cybersecurity. Prior to returning to London from San Francisco, Damien was from 2004 to 2013, Director of Strategy & Corporate Development at Hewlett-Packard, in the Silicon Valley. Between 1997 and 2004 Damien was a Technology, Media and Telecom M&A investment banker at J.P. Morgan, in London. Previously, he founded an IT Services firm in Paris and an Internet Services Provider in Montreal.

Damien holds degrees in Philosophy and Economics from Sorbonne University and a MSc in Finance from Institut d’Etudes Politiques (IEP) in Paris.

Christine Hockley Managing Director, Funds, British Patient Capital Christine joined British Patient Capital at its inception in 2018 and is responsible for directing fund investments in the core programme which invests in venture capital, both early and growth stage, and the Life Sciences Investment Programme which invests in growth stage life sciences funds. She joined from the British Business Bank where she also invested in venture capital funds and British Business Investments where she led a lower mid market private equity pilot. She has previous investment, corporate finance and commercial experience.

Dr Ilian Iliev CEO, NetScientific PLC CEO at Net Scientific PLC, an AIM-listed investor healthcare, sustainability and technology company which operates on a Trans-Atlantic basis - helping UK and EU portfolio companies grow in the US and internationally, and vice-versa. Managing Director and founder of EMV Capital, an international VC investor with a focus on healthcare, sustainability and industrial high-tech.

Ilian is an economist by training and a serial entrepreneur, Ilian has worked in a variety of roles, focusing on issues of corporate innovation, entrepreneurship, innovation finance, technology transfer and innovation policy. Past clients include Fortune 500 companies, policy makers, and SMEs.

Ilian has a PhD from the Judge Business School, Cambridge University, with a focus on Venture Capital business models internationally. He is a former Associate at Chatham House.

Llewellyn John Partner, FPE Capital Llew is a Partner and co-founder at FPE Capital, a specialist private equity growth investor that has focussed exclusively on software and services companies in the UK lower-mid market for over 10 years.

FPE has a unique network designed to give its portfolio of small and medium sized businesses a competitive advantage. Its’ current investments include Togetherall, a digital mental health platform and 60 Decibels, a social impact measurement software and services firm, together with cybersecurity services and connectivity and technology service providers.

The firm’s most recent investment, Egress (a leading London based cloud data migration specialist) marks the first investment from FPE Fund III, the firm’s third software and services focussed fund. Accompanied by two of their senior Investment Managers, this investment was led by Llew, who started his private equity life well over a decade ago at Nova Capital Management, having previously qualified as a Chartered Accountant at Deloitte. He joined the FPE team in 2012. Like all Partners, he is involved in all aspects of the investment cycle, from deal origination and execution through ongoing board representation and exit management. He has invested in a variety of B2B sectors, with a recent focus on media software and connectivity and the broader software and telecoms sectors.

Flor Kassai Partner, Inflexion Flor is a Partner and leads Inflexion’s Buyout Fund. She is also a member of Inflexion’s Executive Committee and Investment Committee.

Before joining Inflexion in 2011, Flor worked for five years at HgCapital, where she focused on the European services sector. Flor also spent two years at Bain & Company advising private equity clients on commercial due diligence engagements as well as two years in JP Morgan’s investment banking team in New York.

Flor has lived and worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina, New York, Philadelphia, and London. An Argentine national, Flor is fluent in French and Spanish.

She has a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from the Instituto Tecnologico de Buenos Aires (ITBA) and is a Wharton/Lauder MBA graduate with honors from the University of Pennsylvania.

Spyro Korsanos Managing General Partner, Fuse Venture Partners Spyro Korsanos is Managing General Partner at Fuse Venture Partners, a technology growth investment firm focussed on investing in growth-stage European internet businesses and supporting them in strategic corporate development and scaling initiatives. The team formerly worked for Softbank, Rocket Internet and Global Founders Capital as well as with successful start-ups such as Delivery Hero and Hellofresh.

Michael Labriola Partner, Wilson Sonsini Michael Labriola is a partner based in Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's London office, where he counsels public and private technology, life sciences and emerging growth companies through all stages of their growth. Michael has a particular focus on supporting companies that undertake transformative events, such as growth financings, IPOs, acquisitions and exit sales. He counsels clients in matters ranging from formation and early-stage venture financing to listings of publicly traded securities on U.S. and foreign exchanges to seasoned public offerings and private and public company acquisitions. He also has considerable experience in counseling publicly held companies on disclosure matters, SEC compliance, NASDAQ and NYSE listing matters, and other securities laws issues. Michael also frequently represents investment banks, venture capital funds, and private equity firms in a broad range of investment transactions.

Prior to joining the London office, Michael was resident in the Washington, DC office, where he supported Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's clients across the U.S. East Coast and Europe. Prior to his legal career, Michael was a certified public accounting in the assurance practices of Arthur Andersen and Ernst & Young, where he audited public, private, and not-for-profit entities in several sectors, including telecommunications and technology.

Ian Lane Partner, Cambridge Innovation Capital Ian Lane is a Partner at Cambridge Innovation Capital (CIC), a Deeptech and Life Sciences Venture Capital fund. Ian manages CIC's investments into Salience Labs, Seldon, AudioTelligence and Secondmind. Before joining CIC, Ian was a Director at Unilever Ventures in London, where he led all B2B/Technology investments. Over 11 years he was responsible for numerous transactions across Europe and North America, including investments into Olapic (acquired by Monotype Inc), Mirakl, Aera Technology, Skupos, WeGift, Celtra, CreatorIQ, Mirriad (Listed on AIM) and Blis Global. Prior to Unilever Ventures, Ian worked at L.E.K. Consulting in London and Australia, working on strategy consulting and private equity due-diligence projects. Ian has PhD in Physical Chemistry from the University of Cambridge and Msci in Chemistry from Bristol University.

Malcolm MacDougall Partner, Stephenson Harwood Malcolm featured in The Lawyer Hot 100 2019 and was the most prolific M&A lawyer in the UK in 2018 and 2020 (mergermarket).

Malcolm is a corporate lawyer specialising in private equity transactions ranging from acting for private equity houses in the mid-market and lower mid-market, to acting for management teams on large cap PE deals. Malcolm’s experience covers all aspects of private equity deals, including MBOs, MBIs, bolt-on acquisitions, investments and exits.

Malcolm specialises in private equity transactions acting for PE houses such as Elysian Capital, FPE Capital, Pelican Capital, bd-capital and Agathos Management, as well as growth capital providers such as BGF, investee companies such as Civica (an investee company of Partners Group) and management teams.

He has acted on transactions such as Elysian Capital’s acquisitions of Fastway Couriers, Eton Bridge Partners, D3O, Wholebake and Gravity Global, FPE Capital’s investments in Egress, Codestone (and the recent bolt-on acquisition of Clarivos) and MaxContact. He has acted for the Civica Group on 30 bolt-on acquisitions and has acted for management teams on mid-market as well as large cap transactions, including acting for the management team of RiverStone Europe on the acquisition by CVC.

Gurpreet Manku Deputy Director General, BVCA Gurpreet Manku is the BVCA’s Deputy Director General and Director of Policy. She is responsible for leading the BVCA’s response to a wide range of issues and challenges facing the industry from a legal and regulatory perspective, both in the UK and Europe. She is also the executive liaison to the Private Equity Reporting Group, the body responsible for monitoring the industry’s compliance with the Walker Guidelines on Transparency and Disclosure. Before joining the BVCA she worked at Deloitte LLP and specialised in advising private equity funds and their managers. Gurpreet studied at the London School of Economics and is a Chartered Accountant and a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales.

Fidel Manolopoulos Principal, EMEA Investment, Hermes GPE Fidel joined Hermes GPE in London in 2017 and focuses on growth investment activities in the EMEA region. He is a member of the Hermes GPE Investment Committee in respect of investments made by the Hermes GPE Innovation Fund. Fidel has a strong background in technology-enabled growth investing, gained over several years at Kennet Partners and ViewPoint Capital. Latterly he was at Mojo Capital where he led direct investments. Fidel holds an MA in Computer Science and Business Administration from the Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany. He is a German/Greek national and speaks fluent English, German and Greek.

Richard Matthews COO, Augmentum Richard has 17 years venture capital and private equity experience in the technology, retail and leisure sectors on both sides of the fence. Having studied economics at the University of Manchester, Richard started his career as a Chartered Accountant at Coopers & Lybrand before leaving in 1999 to join Augmentum Co-Founder Tim Levene at Flutter.com (now Betfair) as CFO.

In 2002 following the merger with Betfair he left to join Benchmark Capital Europe (now Balderton Capital), one of the early investors in Betfair. At Benchmark he worked on early stage technology investments both in the investment phase and assisting the investee companies post funding. He then joined Manzanita Capital in 2005, where he spent 5 years investing in the retail and leisure sectors globally before leaving to form Augmentum Capital. In 2018 Richard and Tim successfully launched Augmentum Fintech on the main market of the London Stock Exchange, in the process becoming the first fintech focused public VC in Europe.

Kirstie Maydew M&A Director, Coca Cola Europacific Partners Kirstie leads M&A at Coca-Cola Europacific Partners and has been involved in its corporate venture capital initiative, CCEP Ventures, since its formation in Feb 2019. CCEP Ventures works with visionary founders who have big ideas for solving beverage industry problems; partnering with them during pilot, growth and scale-up stages through investment, academic funding and commercial relationships. CCEP Ventures currently invests in 15 early-stage businesses across Europe, the US and Asia, from pre-revenue to scale-up, in the areas of Sustainability, Route to Market, Customer Experience and Sales Visibility. Prior to joining CCEP in 2019, Kirstie spent nearly 20 years as an M&A adviser to companies in the food and beverage industry.

Karen McCormick Chief Investment Officer, Beringea Karen is Chief Investment Officer at Beringea, a transatlantic venture capital firm with more than $750m under management. Karen leads investment strategy for the firm, working closely with its U.S. and European portfolio of more than 60 early-stage companies and sitting on the boards of Fnatic, Thread, Blis, Luxury Promise, Moonshot, and EDITED.

Karen has been recognised as one of the leading women in venture capital in Europe. She also chairs ESG_VC, an industry-wide initiative to improve ESG performance in venture-backed businesses involving more than 125 funds in the U.K. and Europe, and she leads INSEAD Venture and Entrepreneurship, a network of alumni of INSEAD who are now the foremost investors and entrepreneurs in Europe.

Karen was previously with the Boston Consulting Group and ran the Watch division of Swiss Army/Wenger. She also has experience with start-ups as both a founder and advisor. Karen has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and has an MBA from INSEAD and a BSBA from Boston University.

Jess McCreadie Principal, Octopus Ventures Jess sits in the Health team, and her focus is engaging with, investing in and supporting Europe’s most promising health tech companies.

“The gap between health and life expectancy is widening and to improve quality of life in later years we need a more decentralised, preventative and personalised approach to healthcare.”

Prior to joining Octopus Ventures in June 2021, Jess led the health tech investing team at Legal & General supporting leading health innovations. She invested balance sheet capital into early-stage health tech businesses and supported scale up via board representation in her portfolio.

Earlier in her career Jess invested into and was a banker in a range of alternative asset classes including renewable energy, real estate, and Venture Capital Funds. Jess has a passion for sustainability and delivering social impact alongside economic value.

Outside of work Jess can be found enjoying London’s restaurants, cycling, running, trying out the newest fitness class on offer, or in the park running around with / after her dog.

Andrew Mitchell Director General for Exports, Department for International Trade Andrew Mitchell was appointed a Director General at the Department for International Trade in May 2020.

Andrew was previously Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for Europe, responsible for the Department for International Trade’s work promoting trade and investment with the countries of Europe.

Prior to this he held senior positions in the Foreign & Commonwealth Office. Andrew led the government’s international work on Prosperity and was the FCO’s Director for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Andrew served in Germany and Nepal and was Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Sweden. Andrew’s work in the private sector focused on major international events, including World Expos and Olympic Games.

In his current role as Director General for Exports and UK Trade, Andrew is responsible for the department’s work on exports, UK Regions and the Devolved Administrations, and global supply chains.

Michael Moore Director General, BVCA Michael Moore is Director General of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association. As private capital has continued to increase its contributions to the UK economy in recent years, Michael and his colleagues in the industry have been focused on supporting the COVID-19 recovery, delivering investment across the whole UK, making the UK one of the best places in the world to invest and do business and supporting the UK to achieve ‘net Zero’. Over the past 30 years Michael has operated at senior levels in both politics and business. In his political career he was a Member of Parliament for 18 years and served in the Cabinet at the time of the Coalition Government, as Secretary of State for Scotland.

After the 2015 General Election, Michael became a Senior Adviser at PwC. Prior to entering politics, he qualified as a chartered accountant with the firm.

Bailey Morrow Managing Director, Venture & Growth, Silicon Valley Bank Bailey Morrow is director, venture and growth for SVB UK. Based in the UK Branch in London, she is responsible for supporting growth-stage companies with banking and lending solutions. She leads the bank’s efforts in growth of the consumer internet and frontier tech markets.

Before transitioning to the UK Branch, Bailey spent eight years with Silicon Valley Bank in San Francisco. She began her SVB career on the Private Equity and Venture Capital relationship management team, in addition to working with Series A companies on the accelerator team.

Bailey holds a bachelor’s degree in combined sciences from Santa Clara University.

Tom Mullan CFO, Gresham Technologies Tom Mullan has been Chief Finance Officer at Gresham Tech since March 2018, a high-growth LSE listed software company that help financial services companies achieve sustainable digital integrity, agility and confidence across their financial data, operations and compliance ecosystems.

Prior to joining Gresham, Tom spent two years as CFO at Fadata, a European-based global insuretech business; eight years as EMEA Finance and Operations Director at Guidewire Software, a Silicon Valley headquartered global insuretech business; and seven years at EY in their audit and assurance function.

Stephen Nundy Partner & CTO, Lakestar Stephen is an experienced technologist and engineer with a passion for setting strategy, introducing technology innovation and building high-performing teams for ambitious global businesses.

Stephen leads our investing in Digitalisation and Deep Tech companies where he has led transactions in AI/ML, B2B SaaS, and Data Analytics companies among others. As CTO he additionally advises the broader investment team on wider opportunities whilst performing technology and product due diligence. As part of the Lakestar value-add platform, he advises portfolio companies on product and technology-related matters as well as setting Lakestar’s internal technology strategy.

Prior to Lakestar, Stephen worked at Goldman Sachs for 20 years in various global offices. There, he was a managing director, led complex global engineering and change groups and served as Chief Technology Officer in a number of global services. Additionally he chaired and sat on various internal global committees including Operating Risk, Regulatory reporting, Career Development, Diversity and Inclusion.

He is a regular external speaker on technology and investment trends at various universities and conferences including NOAH, GTAI, UK Parliament & Internet, Seedery, FIMA and AISummit. He additionally serves on the BVCA (British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association) committee and the advisory board for the Global Tech Advocates network. He graduated with a BSc in Computer Science from Southampton University.

Chris Philp MP Minister for Tech and the Digital Economy Chris Philp was appointed Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport on 17 September 2021.

He was previously Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Home Office and Ministry of Justice from 13 February 2020 to 16 September 2021. Before that, he was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of Justice from 10 September 2019 to 18 December 2019 and Minister for London at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government from 18 December 2019 to 13 February 2020.

Charlotte Phipps-Hornby Head of Corporate BD, Senior Director, Vistra Charlotte is responsible for driving growth in the UK Corporate division at Vistra.

She has expertise in supporting businesses with the expansion of their operations to new markets, M&A & Carve-Outs transaction support and Global Entity Management. She works across multiple client profiles including scale-ups, multinationals, private equity, and family offices to support their commercial growth.

With over 20 years’ experience, her career has taken her to numerous countries spanning firms including Allen & Overy and Baker McKenzie.

She is an avid hockey player in her spare time!

Joanna Scott Managing Director, BOOST&Co Joanna joined BOOST&Co in 2017 and became Managing Director in 2021. Previously she spent 10 years in investment banking at finnCap, where she raised over £1bn for high growth listed UK companies. BOOST&Co has been lending to UK SMEs since 2015, has deployed nearly £600M funds to date and is due to close its fifth dedicated fund this year.

Richard Shaw Partner, Growth Capital Partners Richard Shaw is a Partner at GCP (Growth Capital Partners LLP) and leads our investment activity in the Technology Sector. He has over 19 years’ experience working with growth companies across the UK, through M&A advisory and investor roles. He currently works with the teams at Bridewell, CubeLogic and Indigo and has supported all three with their strategic growth plans including international acquisitions and organic expansion activities across Europe and the USA.

Richard has a passion for business growth and technology, and alongside his day job is involved in mentoring several tech start-ups. He is a Chartered Accountant by training and has a BSC (hons) in Accounting and Finance from the University of Warwick.

Arron Shepherd Co-Founder and Chief Storyteller, Goat Arron is a serial investor and entrepreneur with years of experience in the digital marketing industry.

At 23, Arron moved to Dubai and became Global Director of Business Development at The First Group. By 2012 Arron co-founded Sportlobster; where he built a team of over 60 staff, on-boarded over 2 million users and completed successful partnerships with Cristiano Ronaldo, the NBA, Crystal Palace, Sky and many other major sports brands.

After working client side, Arron together with former Sportlobster colleagues Harry Hugo and Nick Cooke, discovered the power of influencer marketing to drive real value for brands, this drove them to establish The Goat Agency and scale this to a wider market. Goat is the leading influencer marketing agency globally and has been named the 4th fastest growing agency in the world and the number 1 in Europe.

7 years later and Goat has over 200 staff, 3 international offices and runs global campaigns for the likes of Malibu, Lidl, Uber and more.

Arron’s industry experience has not only given him insight into what is required to deliver fast growth, but with his experience as an Investor, Founder and Agency Director he is uniquely positioned to offer insight on all aspects of entrepreneurship and influencer marketing.

Luke Smith CEO, Croud Luke Smith is Croud’s CEO and co-founder. Having started out his career at News International and The Economist, Luke turned his hand to agency relationship management at Google, where his passion for all things digital grew - as did his belief that the agency model was broken. In 2011, alongside Ben Knight, he founded Croud, a digital agency that would cater to clients’ 24/7/365 demands. Luke’s ambition for growth, demand for excellence, and passion for a people-led business have enabled Croud to thrive in what has been a tough and volatile few years for the industry.

Dr Keith Strickland CEO, Plessey Keith has over 27 years’ experience in the semiconductor industry starting with GEC-Plessey Semiconductors in 1995 and has held various senior engineering, management and executive roles. Keith now leads Plessey Semiconductors during a period of unprecedented investment and growth, having been key to the pivoting of the company to the development of novel LED displays and securing a strategic partner in 2020.

Keith holds a B.Sc. Honours degree in Physics and Electronics (1987), M.Sc. degree in Semiconductor Devices (1988) and a Ph.D. in Solid State Physics (1992). Keith has written numerous publications, presenting papers at national and international conferences over many years, holds a number of patents in the field of semiconductor design and optoelectronics and sits on several steering group panels for major university funded science programmes in the UK.

Paul Taylor Founder & CEO, Thought Machine Paul Taylor founded Thought Machine in 2014 because he wanted to use the same cloud technology he was exposed to while at Google to solve the banking industry’s legacy infrastructure problem. He believed something needed to be done about the way most banking systems were so cumbersome and awkward, not to mention deeply frustrating and practically useless for millions of end users.

Thought Machine’s core banking engine Vault was born in the spring of 2015 to liberate banks from archaic legacy systems. Will Montgomery wrote the code while Paul acted as product manager – setting and guiding the overall direction of the system – a role he still plays today.

Prior to Thought Machine, Paul founded two software companies, Rhetorical Systems and Phonetic Arts, and both were acquired by global software companies, Nuance and Google. After Phonetic Arts was acquired by Google in 2010, Paul joined Google to lead a team of engineers responsible for launching the pioneering text-to-speech system in 2012. This system still provides the basis for all of Google’s speech output, including driving directions, voice search and accessibility to machine translation. The system has been installed on more than a billion phones since 2012.

Paul is the published author of Text-To-Speech Synthesis, lecturer in linguistics at Cambridge University, and director of the Centre for Speech Research at Edinburgh University.

Victoria Wain Investment Director, Phoenix Equity Partners Victoria joined Phoenix in 2018 and spends her time seeking out and working with ambitious founders and entrepreneurs. Victoria focuses on healthcare and consumer & leisure investing and has been involved in a number of Phoenix investments, including a tech enabled legal services platform, private dental group and electronic security and fire safety business, supporting their development through organic and acquisitive growth.

Prior to joining Phoenix Victoria worked at PwC, where she advised on a range of transactions as part of the corporate finance and transaction services teams. Victoria is an ACA Chartered Accountant and has a BSc in Natural Sciences from Durham University.

Rupert West Managing Director, Puma Private Equity Rupert has worked at Puma for over ten years. He heads the Puma Private Equity business and sits on the Puma Investments Leadership Committee.

Rupert oversees all aspects of investment and portfolio management but is most active in helping management teams define strategy, or supporting during periods of fundamental change.

Rupert has broad experience within financial markets having trained within the Standard Bank global graduate programme and then moved to Barclays Capital. At Puma he led a series of funds before developing Puma Private Equity as a standalone division of the group in 2018.?

Rupert read Philosophy and Economics at the University of Bristol before an MSc in International Policy Analysis at the University of Bath. He used to have interests out of the office but now has young children, however, he fondly remembers a time when he did some exercise, enjoyed cooking, and read a lot about economics.

Antonia Whitecourt Head of Finance, Seedcamp Antonia heads up the 'Engine' of Seedcamp which looks after Seedcamp’s investors and is responsible for fund operations, portfolio tracking and analysis, finance, regulation, and legal. She works closely with the investment team to make sure founders are supported throughout their investment journey.

Antonia is excited about the power of technology to democratise knowledge and systemise processes. At Seedcamp, she gets to work with visionary people every day that are making that happen.

Antonia’s initial career in investment banking and leading expansion & operations at an early stage start-up have shown her that closing multi-million-pound deals can be as exciting as getting your first repeat user.

She is a true European having grown up in Luxembourg to a German mother and English father. Antonia speaks English, German, French and Luxembourgish, loves backcountry skiing and making new friends.

Ben Wilkinson CFO, Molten Ben has been CFO of Molten since 2016. He has over 10 years of experience as a public company CFO.

At Molten Ben has been responsible for building out the balance sheet, through equity and debt financing and broadening the shareholder register. He has developed the finance function and led on Molten’s move to the main market. Prior to Molten, Ben served for five years as CFO of AIM-listed President Energy plc.

Ben is a Chartered Accountant, FCA, with a background in M&A investment banking from ABN Amro/RBS where he was involved with multiple crossborder transactions and corporate financings. Ben is a graduate of Royal Holloway, University of London with a BSc in Economics.

Jim Wilkinson CEO, Zuto Jim Wilkinson is the co-founder and CEO of Zuto; the Manchester based fintech. Jim founded Zuto with the mission of transforming the car finance industry, to bring more transparency and trust to customers. Jim is passionate about changing things for the better, and Zuto recently become a certified B Corp, joining the growing number of businesses that acknowledge a higher purpose, beyond just growth and profitability.

High Growth 2022

Hear unmatched insight from over 70 experienced, high-calibre speakers from across the industry

Day 1: Venture

Day 2: Growth