Speakers
Co-founder & CEO Neufund
CEO Accion Systems
Co-founder , CEO & CTO Natural Cycles
President Monzo
CEO FiveAI
Founder and CEO Elvie
VP, Business Development TF Holdings
General Partner Balderton Capital
Founder and Managing Director Shasta Ventures
Co-Founder & General Partner Firstminute Capital
VP of Corporate development Lilium
CEO Dubsmash
Co-founder/CEO/President Eligo Bioscience
Co-founder & Executive Director Angel Labs
Managing Partner Seedcamp
Managing Director Techstars
Partner Highland Europe
Founder & GP Delta Blockchain Fund
General Partner Index Ventures
Founder and CEO MOIA GmbH
Co-Founder and CTO Slack
Sr. Staff Machine Learning Scientist Tesla
Co-Founder & CEO Talent Clue
Partner Elaia
Founder and Chairwoman Topia
Founder AngelPad
General Partner Sequoia Capital
Co-Founder & CEO ResearchGate
CEO and Founder Atlantic Labs
Founder & Executive Chairman BlaBlaCar
Partner Uncork Capital
Founding Partner Cherry Ventures
Partner Index Ventures
Co-Founder and Partner Earlybird Venture Capital
President & Co-Founder Skimlinks
General Partner and Co-Founder BlueYard Capital
Co-founder & CEO GetYourGuide
Co-Founder Pipedrive
Seed Club Manager Isai
General Partner, Founder Index Ventures
Co-Founder KR1
Founder & CEO Parrot
Chief Executive Officer ABB
CEO & Founder N26
Founder – CEO Parity Technologies
Founder & Chief Executive Officer Revolut
CEO & Co-founder Clue
Founder & Chief Product Officer Evi
Founder & CEO MessageBird
Founder / Lead Developer Parity Technologies
Co- Founder & CIO Volocopter
Zoe Adamovicz is a co-founder at Xyo
Natalya Bailey is the CEO and a co-founder of Accion Systems, a company providing in-space propulsion for satellites and spacecraft. An Oregon native, Natalya moved to Cambridge to complete her doctorate in space propulsion at MIT where she helped invent the first working prototype of an ion engine technology for small satellites, which would become the first product at Accion. Prior to MIT, she invented a new chemical rocket technology that she turned into a space startup. Natalya was a New England Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2017, a Boston Business Journal Woman to Watch in 2017, and named to Inc. Magazine¹s 30 Under 30 in 2017 and Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in 2016. During graduate school, Natalya was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a NASA Ambassador to the US at the International Aeronautical Congress. In her free time, she works with the group YouthCITIES to show kids you can work on changing the world and having fun at the same time in STEM fields, and is also learning to program in Python with her husband.
Dr. Elina Berglund is the co-founder and co-CEO of Natural Cycles the fertility app which allows women to help prevent, plan and monitor pregnancies. As a top physicist, Elina was part of the team that discovered the Higgs boson at the CERN laboratory in Switzerland, which lead to the Nobel Prize in physics in 2013. Following this success, Elina and her husband, co-founder of Natural Cycles, Dr Raoul Scherwitzl, were looking for an effective natural contraceptive. With few natural family planning options on the market, and a desire to avoid the side effects of the pill, Elina decided to apply her mathematical techniques to create an advanced algorithm that could accurately pinpoint when a woman was fertile – and this was turned into an app so all couples could benefit from their innovation. Elina and Raoul’s mission is to educate and empower women worldwide to take control of their fertility and future, championing a vision where every pregnancy brings happiness. Today, Natural Cycles is the first, and only, app to be certified as a contraception, and has been shown in clinical studies to be similarly effective as the contraceptive pill. The app has over 500,000 users in 161 countries.
Tom Blomfield is the CEO of Monzo, a new kind of bank, designed for smartphones. Tom previously founded GoCardless, a fintech startup that has gone on to raise $25m. In 2013, he was nominated as one of the Top 5 Entrepreneurs Under 30 by the European Commission. He gives talks regularly about the future of banking and fintech.
Stan Boland is the Chief Executive Officer and the Founder of FiveAI.
Tania is an internationally recognized women’s health expert and has held leadership positions for various global NGOs and the United Nations. Passionate about challenging taboo women’s issues, Tania founded Elvie in 2013, partnering with Alexander Asseily to create a global hub of connected health and lifestyle products for women.
Tom Carter is Vice President of Partnerships and Business Strategies at NewComLink. He started with NewComLink in 2009. Previously, he was at Dell Financial Services.
Suranga joined Balderton as a General Partner in 2014, he was previously an entrepreneur and engineer.
Suranga founded blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video and audio content in Cambridge in 2004. He then led the company for eight years as CEO through its journey of moving to San Francisco, building a profitable business and going public in London where it achieved a peak market capitalization in excess of $1Bn. Before founding blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy Corporation, where he ultimately served as the company’s US CTO in San Francisco.
In 2017, Suranga joined the UK Government’s Council for Science and Technology. Suranga was granted an OBE for services to technology and engineering in the 2018 UK New Year’s Honours.
Rob is a founder of Shasta Ventures and a 23-year veteran of the Silicon Valley venture capital industry. At Shasta Ventures, Rob focuses on investing in robotics, space, and the future of transportation. Early in his career, Rob served as an engineer in the Astro Space division of Martin Marietta, where he helped build the first A2100 satellite, a platform which is still in production today at Lockheed.
Rob spends his weekends car-racing and believes similar skills are needed to be a successful entrepreneur. As he explains, “Racing requires you to focus and make good decisions quickly.” Rob led Shasta’s Series A investment in Nest (acquired by Google for $3.2 billion in 2014). His current investments include Accion (ion engines for in-space propulsion), Fetch Robotics (robots for warehouse logistics), Starship Technologies (local delivery robots), and Turo (peer-to-peer carsharing company).
Rob earned an MS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a BS degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Virginia. He also holds an MBA degree from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was named a Palmer Scholar.
Spencer Crawley is General Partner at firstminute capital. Launched in June 2017 and co-founded with Brent Hoberman, firstminute is a $100m global seed-stage fund, it is proud to count two institutional investors (Atomico and Tencent) and 29 founders of billion dollar technology businesses amongst its investors. Previous roles include Business Development at AppDirect (a San Francisco-based cloud commerce platform provider), Investment Associate at DMC Partners (Goldman Sachs spin-out Special Opportunities fund), and Analyst in the Moscow office of Goldman Sachs (in the Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities division). Spencer studied History at Oxford University, did his MBA at INSEAD, and speaks fluent Russian and pidgin French.
Yann is a Partner at Atomico, based in London, where he works on the sourcing, evaluation, negotiation and due diligence of new investment opportunities. Yann focuses on technology in advertising, logistics and transportation, and healthcare, and works with several Atomico portfolio companies including Jobandtalent, Teralytics, GoEuro and Lilium. Yann joined Atomico from Redpoint e.ventures (RPeV), one of Brazil’s leading venture capital funds in Brazil, where he was a Managing Director and co-founder, leading investments in Farfetch and Gympass. Prior to starting RPeV, he was the head of corporate development for Cisco in EMEA and Latin America, and spent five years in Silicon Valley working in a start-up and venture capital. Yann began his career in engineering and operating roles at large tech companies across Europe and emerging markets, including Hong Kong and Egypt. Yann holds an MSEE from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH) and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Yann is fluent in English and French, and proficient in German and Portuguese.
Xavier Duportet, 29, is a genome architect. He cofounded Eligo Bioscience in 2014, while doing his PhD in Synthetic Biology at MIT and INRIA. He raised $24M from Khosla Ventures and Seventure to develop a new generation of ultra-precise biotherapeutics to battle antibiotic-resistant bacteria and sculpt our microbiome using genetic engineering and CRISPR/Cas. He is an MIT TR35 and was elected French Innovator of the year by the MIT Technology Review in 2015. He was recently awarded French PhD-Entrepreneur of the year by the Foundation Norbert Segard, as one of the 40 under 40 Young Leaders in Europe, one of the 30 Under 30 by Forbes in 2017 and recently elected as a Technology Pioneer 2017 by the World Economic Forum. Xavier is also the founder and president of Hello Tomorrow, a global non-profit organization, operating in 45 countries, which goal is to accelerate the development of deeptech startups that transform disruptive scientific technologies into products or services to solve societal and industrial challenges.
Marie Ekeland is co-founder of daphni, a venture capital firm which invests in European tech startups and is supported by an online platform and an international community of experts. She began her career in 1997 at J.P. Morgan in New York as a computer scientist. Since 2000, Marie has been acting as a VC, first at CPR Private Equity, then, from 2005 to 2014 at Elaia Partners, leading investments in Criteo, Edoki Academy, Pandacraft, Teads, Wyplay, and Ykone. In 2012 she co-founded France Digitale, bringing together French VCs & entrepreneurs to make the French digital ecosystem thrive. She serves as a board member for Parrot, Showroomprive. Marie holds an engineering degree in mathematics and computer science from Paris Dauphine University as well as a master’s degree in Economics from the Paris School of Economics.
Former star-trader at Goldman Sachs, promoted to Vice President by the age of 26 and made the “top 30 under 30” list in Trader Magazine in 2008 and Forbes Magazine in 2011 after profitably trading the 2008 and 2011 crashes. Moved to Geneva-based macro fund Jabre Capital in 2011, before deciding in 2014 that the future of finance lay in blockchain technology. She studied Economics & Statistics at the University College London.
Tugce Ergul is a co-founder at Angel Labs, the world’s first investor accelerator with a strong focus on diversity & inclusion. Before founding Angel Labs, she worked as a Managing Director at Startup Labs where she managed over 30 successful digital investments. AL operates in 45 countries and exists to supercharge investor communities and empower high-net-worth individuals, family offices & executives worldwide. Tugce started her career as an investment banker and was working at Young Turk Ventures, a leading Turkish VC fund, before joining Startup Labs. She received her undergraduate degree in Finance from Sorbonne University with honors and holds a master’s degree in International Management from Bocconi. Tugce is an active member of the European VC network and regularly speaks at events around the world regarding entrepreneurship, economic development and technology. She is fluent in English, French, Turkish, Azeri, Spanish, Italian and speaks some Portuguese. Tugce’s work has been featured in many publications such as USA Today, Forbes, and The Guardian.
Carlos is Managing Partner at Seedcamp, Europe’s seed fund, investing early in world-class founders attacking large, global markets and solving real problems using technology. Carlos hails originally from Latin America and joined Seedcamp in ’09 following stints as an Associate at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures and as an engineer for the Advanced Communications Technologies group of The New York Stock Exchange (SIAC). Carlos runs Seedcamp alongside Reshma Sohoni and is passionate about working closely with founders from their earliest stage, supporting them across everything from finding product-market-fit to setting fundraising milestones – he wrote a successful book on that very topic, The Fundraising Fieldguide. Carlos is frequently listed as one of the most influential voices in tech and VC. You can find Carlos podcasting at ‘This Much I Know’ where he interviews leading tech voices, innovators, entrepreneurs, investors and operators as they share their stories with Seedcamp’s global audience.
Jenny Fielding is the Managing Director of Techstars New York where she leads the program. She is also the founder and General Partner at The Fund, a first check fund investing exclusively in New York based companies. Her portfolio includes more than 140+ tech enabled companies. Previously, Jenny headed up Corporate Venture and Digital Innovation at BBC Worldwide where she made strategic investments and led business development deals. She has also started several tech companies, most notably Switch-Mobile, a mobile VoIP company that was acquired in 2009. Jenny began her career as a lawyer, spent time at JP Morgan and is a graduate of Columbia University where she is an Adjunct Professor.
Irena is a co-founder and General Partner at Highland Europe, which invests exclusively in growth stage software and internet businesses. Highland Europe’s portfolio includes eGym, GetYourGuide, Malwarebytes, MatchesFashion, and WeTransfer. Irena joined Highland Capital Partners in Boston and moved from the US in 2007 to establish the firm’s European office alongside Fergal Mullen. She worked closely with Privalia (acquired by Vente-Privee for over $500M) and currently represents Highland Europe on the boards of eGym, Jampp, JUNIQE and WeTransfer. Irena grew up in the Ukraine and Wisconsin, and speaks Russian and French. She attended MIT as an undergrad and Harvard for her MBA.
Kavita Gupta is the founder and General Partner of Delta Blockchain Fund. Kavita kicked off her career at the IFC trading floor where she built new products with the Liquid Asset Management team. She was a core member of the team that issued the first social impact bonds and the first green bonds. Kavita has experience with emerging market funds, investing across Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She started her company WeMynd and then joined Eric Schmidt’s family office where she invested in various impact-driven technologies. She started Consensys Ventures as a General Partner (2017-2019), where she was an early investor into the Ethereum ecosystem and invested in various successful companies at the very early stage including some first checks, like BlockFi, Sorare, Starkware, Quantstamp, Bank Juno, PDAX, Coinhouse, and Unlock Protocol. Over the last six years she has invested in over 60 deals (Fund and personal) building long lasting personal relationships with some of the top founding team members of the blockchain space along the way. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University where she co-lectured Blockchain 101, and is on the advisory board at the Center of Capital Markets and Competitiveness at the US Chamber of Commerce. She also sits on the board of International Emmys, Distributed Trust Initiative at Stanford University and advises the UNICEF GIGA project. Kavita is passionate about working with great founders and being a trusted partner throughout their journey. Kavita Gupta is the founder and General Partner of Delta Blockchain Fund. Kavita kicked off her career at the IFC trading floor where she built new products with the Liquid Asset Management team. She was a core member of the team that issued the first social impact bonds and the first green bonds. Kavita has experience with emerging market funds, investing across Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She started her company WeMynd and then joined Eric Schmidt’s family office where she invested in various impact-driven technologies. She started Consensys Ventures as a General Partner (2017-2019), where she was an early investor into the Ethereum ecosystem and invested in various successful companies at the very early stage including some first checks, like BlockFi, Sorare, Starkware, Quantstamp, Bank Juno, PDAX, Coinhouse, and Unlock Protocol. Over the last six years she has invested in over 60 deals (Fund and personal) building long lasting personal relationships with some of the top founding team members of the blockchain space along the way. She is a visiting scholar at Stanford University where she co-lectured Blockchain 101, and is on the advisory board at the Center of Capital Markets and Competitiveness at the US Chamber of Commerce. She also sits on the board of International Emmys, Distributed Trust Initiative at Stanford University and advises the UNICEF GIGA project. Kavita is passionate about working with great founders and being a trusted partner throughout their journey.
Jan Hammer is a partner at Index Ventures.
Ole Harms (43) has been CEO of MOIA since December 2016. After working as a strategy consultant at Capgemini, Harms joined Volkswagen Consulting in 2008. As head of the Sales and Marketing division, he advised Volkswagen’s top management. In 2012, he took over as Head of New Business Models and Performance. From 2014 to January 2016 he was Executive Director and Head of New Business Models & Mobility Services. There he initiated the mobility partnership with the city of Hamburg and was responsible for the conception and development of MOIA. Ole Harms lives in Hannover and Berlin.
James Harrison
Cal Henderson is the co-founder and CTO of Slack. He is an experienced technology leader, having previously built and led the engineering team at Flickr, through its acquisition by Yahoo. As a popular speaker on engineering scalability, he authored the best-selling O’Reilly Media book “Building Scalable Websites”. He was a pioneer in the use of web APIs, and created the basis for oAuth and oEmbed, now used by YouTube, Twitter, and many others. Cal has a Bachelor of Computer Science from the University of Central England, and was involved in London’s early online community through his work with the early digital community B3ta and his personal blog iamcal.com, which he has ran for over 15 years. Cal now resides in San Francisco.
Forrest Iandola founded DeepScale, which was acquired by Tesla in 2019. He now serves as the Head of Perception at Anduril Industries.
Ana Izquierdo is Talent Clue’s CEO, the company that develops the recruiting software that helps recruiting teams to connect with the best talent and hire them faster, while delivering the best candidate experience. She is an executive with extensive experience in the technology and entrepreneurial industry. In her professional career she has been a key piece in companies such as Hewlett-Packard, where she was Global Marketing Director (2004-2006) and Global Vice President of Enterprise Solutions (2008-2010). In 2012, after quitting her job in Hewlett-Packard, she met Ivan Sala, Talent Clue’s founder. Together they decided to reconvert the company taking the business from service to product. The year 2013 was decisive in this new path since it was key to transform the whole company and launch the first version of the software. Since then, Ana has led Talent Clue’s professionalization process which currently has half a hundred employees. The different departments have been established and tools and methodologies have been set. At the same time, she is continuously doing an important job seeking investment to ensure the growth of the company. Other notable milestones of her careers is her participation in the creation of the investment fund Ellas 2.0, which offers consulting and accompaniment to women who want to build new business models in the digital economy sector. She also promoted Startup Weekend and has offered mentorship services to many associations
Samantha joined Elaia Partners in 2008. She began her career as a consultant at Eurogroup, a consulting firm specialized in organisation and strategy, within the Bank and Finance division. She then joined Clipperton Finance, a corporate finance firm dedicated to high-tech growth companies, before moving to Elaia Partners in 2008. She became an Investment Manager in 2011 then a Partner in 2014.
Brynne Kennedy is the Founder and former CEO of Topia, the talent mobility suite that helps companies move their employees between locations. Brynne founded Topia after working in investment banking and private equity. She has raised more than $100 million in venture capital funding for Topia and grown the company to operate worldwide. Topia contributes a % of revenue to support refugees and at-risk populations, and Brynne has pledged a % of personal exit proceeds to charity. Brynne holds an MBA from London Business School and a BA from Yale, where she was a Division 1 gymnast.
Thomas Korte is the founder of [AngelPad](http://angelpad.org), a seed-VC and Accelerator. His notable investments include Mopub (acq. Twitter), Adku (acq. Groupon), Spotsetter (acq. Apple), Postmates, Angellist, Coverhound, DroneDeploy, Periscope amongst 150 others – Thomas is always the first investor in a company. Prior to founding AngelPad, Thomas joined Google’s Product Manager when it was just 7 people. He was responsible for all the Google Product Launches in Europe dating back to 2002. He spent 7 years at Headquarters and was at the origin of Adwords, AdSense, Google Maps and Google Shopping. Thomas is the author of two patents which are still a crucial part of Google search ranking and ads monetization products.
Avid is a general partner at GV. Prior to GV, Avid cofounded Boticca, a global marketplace for independent brands of fashion accessories (acquired by Wolf & Badger in 2015) • Avid has been involved in the startup ecosystem as a developer, product manager, founder, investor, and adviser since 1998 • Avid worked at Accel Partners; held product management roles at Tellme Networks, eBay, and Skype • Avid leads Code.org and the Hour of Code in the UK. She is on the board of trustees of Founders4Schools and serves on the Harvard Business School European Advisory Board. Avid has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum
Luciana Lixandru is a Partner at Sequoia, where she focuses on enterprise and consumer technology companies across Europe and co-leads Sequoia’s early-stage investment business in the US/Europe. She works closely with companies like Pennylane, Veed, Robco and Tacto and is passionate about helping founders unlock their potential and think on a global scale. Prior to becoming Sequoia’s first partner in Europe in 2020, Luciana worked at Accel for eight years, where she led investments in UiPath (PATH), Deliveroo (DROOF), and Miro, among others. Luciana has also held positions at Summit Partners and Morgan Stanley. She has a B.S. in Economics and Mathematics from Georgetown, and resides in London.
Ijad Madisch (36) is co-founder and CEO of ResearchGate, the professional network that connects the world of science and opens research up to all. Following his own frustrations as a researcher isolated in his lab, Ijad founded ResearchGate in 2008 together with his friends, fellow physician Dr. Sören Hofmayer and computer scientist Horst Fickenscher. ResearchGate has since grown to more than 12 million scientists around the world. Ijad earned his doctorate in the field of virology, while also studying computer science on the side. He spent several years working as a researcher at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, focusing on tissue engineering and radiology. Under Ijad’s leadership, ResearchGate has attracted a group of renowned investors, including Bill Gates, Benchmark, Wellcome Trust and Founders Fund.
Christophe F. Maire is the Founding Partner and CEO of Atlantic Labs, a Berlin-based seed investor dedicated to identifying and investing in innovative digital startup companies. In the last 20+ years, Christophe has built an international track record both as a founder; including gate5 (sold first to Nokia and later developed into HERE and sold to the German automotive industry) and Plazes.com (also sold to Nokia); and as a farsighted investor named best “European Seed Investor” by Techcrunch two years running. Exited investments include Brands4Friends (eBay), Readmill (Dropbox); StudiVZ, Fyber and Plista. Recent investments led by Atlantic Labs include Medigo, Clue, Jodel, and Campanda, amongst others. Christophe remains actively involved in all his investments, including as a board member of Soundcloud, EyeEm, and Monoqi, and an active promoter of the Berlin startup ecosystem.
Since pioneering the idea of BlaBlaCar in 2004, Fred has led the company to become the world’s largest long-distance carpooling community. As a branding and communications enthusiast, Fred has built a global brand whilst relentlessly spreading the word about the virtues of carpooling. Fred carries BlaBlaCar’s vision of a people-powered travel network enabled by trust and technology, and is passionate about high social impact solutions. As a regular speaker at leading international conferences and in the media, Fred sheds light on the fast changing mobility landscape, entrepreneurship, global marketplaces and building trust in online communities. Prior to founding BlaBlaCar, Fred held the role of scientific researcher at NASA (USA) and NTT (Japan). He holds an MBA from INSEAD, a Masters in Computer Science from Stanford and a Masters in Physics from Ecole Normale Supérieure (France). Fred is also an accomplished classical pianist. Tweet him @mazaic.
Andy is a Partner with Uncork Capital (formerly known as SoftTech VC), one of Silicon Valley’s most active seed stage venture capital firms where he primarily invests in SaaS, vertical industry solutions, and developer tools. Prior to joining SoftTech, Andy was co-founder of London-headquartered Huddle, an enterprise SaaS collaboration platform that was acquired in 2017. Andy’s angel investment portfolio includes innovative B2B products like Pipedrive, Intercom, Apiary (acquired by Oracle), Buffer and Bugsnag, as well as consumer services including Postmates, Secret Escapes, HER, and Calm. Andy co-founded and is the US Trustee for the Founders Pledge, a charity that promotes altruism in early stage entrepreneurs by enabling them to donate a percentage of personal proceeds following an exit. He was awarded an OBE in the 2015 Queen’s birthday honors list for services to the UK technology industry.
Christian is a Founding Partner at Cherry Ventures. After some years at The Boston Consulting Group, Christian joined Zalando (FSE:ZAL)as their first CMO. Christian was responsible for building up and managing the group’s marketing efforts (i.e. performance marketing, CRM, PR, TV and brand marketing). He then joined the Management Board of Peek&Cloppenburg and was responsible for the company’s online business. He holds a diploma in business administration from WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management. He has lived and worked in the U.S., Spain, Brazil and South Africa. Christian gets excited about founders that are as passionate about execution as they are about building a strong and sustainable brand. He has a particular focus on logistics and mobility as well a food technology companies.
Martin Mignot is an early stage investor with Index Ventures actively looking after Index’s investments in Algolia, Blablacar, Capitaine Train, Deliveroo, Drivy, Rad, Swiftkey and TheFamily.
Christian Nagel is Co-Founder and Partner of Earlybird. Christian has more than 20 years of entrepreneurial and investment experience. He was Chairman of the Board of Tipp24 AG (Prime Standard Frankfurt Exchange: TIM) and Interhyp AG (Prime Standard Frankfurt Exchange: IYP), which returned more than 50x the original Earlybird investment. Up till the trade sale to SMSC (NASDAQ: SMSC) he also served on the board of BridgeCo AG. He is currently on the boards of CrossEngage (Berlin), Cashboard (Berlin), N26 (Berlin), Smava (Berlin) and Tradico (Munich). Prior to founding Earlybird in 1997, Christian, together with a group of investors, acquired various companies from the Treuhandanstalt (the former East-German state holding) and gained operational experience. He was a shareholder and an Executive Director of HNP Präzisionsteile GmbH & Co. KG, SMB Industrieholding GmbH, DH Industrieholding Hohenthurm GmbH and a number of other subsidiary companies of these holding companies. Previously, Christian worked as an Engagement Manager with McKinsey & Co. Inc. focusing on restructuring, strategy and M & A projects within various industries. He holds a Diplom-Wirtschaftsingenieur degree (Industrial Engineering, MSc equivalent) from the Technical University of Hamburg, specializing in process engineering and a PhD degree in management from the University of St. Gallen.
Alicia Navarro is CEO and Co-founder of Skimlinks, having evolved the business out of a previous social shopping startup. Skimlinks is a leading content monetization technology, helping thousands of publishers all over the world to earn money from their content in seamless simple way. Alicia’s vision for Skimlinks is to see online publishers be rewarded for the role they play in creating purchase intent. She achieved this by removing the technical and administrative complexities that hamper would-be affiliates, and helping turn affiliate marketing into a mainstream ubiquitous revenue model for blogs, editorial sites, forums, and other content platforms. Alicia worked for over 10 years in internet applications, designing and launching mobile and internet-based applications in Australia and the UK. She has a Bachelor of Information Technology and the University Medal for Computing Sciences from the University of Technology, Sydney.
Ciarán O’Leary is a co-founder of BlueYard Capital, a $120m early stage fund based in Berlin that invests in founders decentralizing markets, empowering users and liberating data. Ciarán’s investments include Wunderlist, Carto, BigchainDB, Vectary, deepstream and others from Palo Alto to Bratislava. Prior to founding BlueYard, Ciarán set-up Earlybird Venture Capital’s Berlin office as a partner and before that was at The Carlyle Group.
Johannes Reck is the Chief Executive Officer at GetYourGuide. He leads the company’s long-term vision and strategy. Johannes co-founded GetYourGuide in 2009 while attending the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and has grown the company into the leading booking platform for incredible travel experiences. Under Johannes’ leadership, over 30 million tickets have been booked to date via the GetYourGuide website, mobile app, and partnership network. GetYourGuide has raised over $650M from investors such as the SoftBank Vision Fund, Battery Ventures and KKR. Johannes leads GetYourGuide’s 550-person global team from its headquarters in Berlin, Germany. Johannes originally hails from Cologne, Germany and holds an M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Mounia started her career in the VC industry in 2008 with Ventech. She moved in 2011 to Morocco to co-found and manage Mydeal, one of the first group buying sites in Maghreb. Back to Paris, she joined Schibsted Growth, the corporate venture fund of the Schibsted Group (owner of the successful classifieds site LeBonCoin). She joined ISAI in june 2015 to manage the Seed Club activity. Mounia is also a co-founder of StartHer, an organization that aims at promoting entrepreneurship by women.
Mark is a Partner and MD at Lakestar, a venture capital firm that invests globally into technology companies led by exceptional entrepreneurs. Investments of the group include Skype, Facebook, airbnb, Spotify, Oscar, and GoEuro. Mark also serves as board member at portfolio companies Teralytics, Seerene, and CrossLend. Prior to Lakestar, Mark worked with international law firm Linklaters LLP and Private Equity and Venture Capital boutique Pöllath + Partners in Munich. He completed his legal and business studies at Bucerius Law School and the Stanford Graduate School of Business with a specialization in corporate and tax law and is a recipient of the German Bundestag/United States Congress scholarship program.
Keld is cofounder of KR1 UKs leading crypto investment public company. First investors in Melonport, Funfair, Rocketpool and Etherisc. Keld is advisor to IXLedger and previously cofounder of several web startups since 1995. www.kryptonite1.co
Henri Seydoux founded Parrot in 1994 and has been its CEO ever since its inception. Parrot is today one of the major players in the civil drone market. Self-taught, Henri started his career in 1978 as a trainee and then as a journalist for the magazine Actuel. In 1982, he joined the company SSCI as a developer and then, the company Micro Archi. In 1986, he created BSCA, a company that specialized in rendering 3D computer images and served as CEO until 1990. In 1991, along with three other partners, he founded Christian Louboutin, a luxury shoes company.
Ulrich Spiesshofer was appointed Chief Executive Officer in September 2013 and has been a member of the Executive Committee since 2005. From January 2010 to September 2013, Mr. Spiesshofer was the Executive Committee member responsible for the Discrete Automation and Motion division. He joined ABB in November 2005, as the Executive Committee member responsible for Corporate Development. From 2002 until he joined ABB, he was senior partner and global head of operations practice at Roland Berger AG (Switzerland). From 1991 to 2002, he held various management positions with A.T. Kearney Ltd. and its affiliates. Mr. Spiesshofer was born in 1964 and is a Swiss and German citizen.
Valentin Stalf is co-founder and CEO of N26. In 2013 he founded N26 with his longtime friend Maximilian Tayenthal. Back then already, both shared a vision of building a bank that the world loves to use. Since the initial product launch in 2015, N26 has grown to include more than 2.5 million customers across 24 European markets — with plans to enter the US in 2019. The firm has raised more than USD 500 million from some of the world’s most well-known investors, including Insight Venture Partners, GIC – Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, Tencent, Allianz X, Peter Thiel’s Valar Ventures, Li Ka-Shing’s Horizons Ventures, Earlybird Venture Capital, Battery Ventures, in addition to members of the Zalando management board, and Redalpine Ventures. N26 has more than 800 employees based in in Berlin, New York and Barcelona, who are concentrated on reinventing the banking experience for the digital generation. With its full banking license, state-of-the-art technology and no branch network, N26 is redesigning banking for the 21st century. Before N26, Valentin was an Entrepreneur in Residence for Rocket Internet, an incubator and investor in online startups. There he helped to develop several companies in the mobile payments industry, including payleven and Paymill GmbH. Moreover, he worked in strategy consulting and investment banking. Valentin has a bachelor’s degree in business administration and management and a master’s degree in accounting and finance from the University of St. Gallen. He is currently a member of the advisory board at the Vienna University of Economics and Business.
Jutta Steiner is the co-founder and CEO of Parity Technologies.Parity Technologies has developed the most advanced Ethereum client and has recently started a new blockchain network protocol called Polkadot—a pioneering work to address governance, interoperability, and scalability of blockchain technology and a fundamental building block of the future decentral Web 3. She previously served as Chief of Security for the Ethereum Foundation, overseeing security audit and integration prior to the launch of the public blockchain in 2015.
Nikolay Storonsky is the Founder and CEO at Revolut. He is a former Equity Derivatives Trader at Credit Suisse and Lehman Brothers. Storonsky graduated from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (State University) (MIPT) with a master of science in General and Applied Physics and earned a master of arts in Applied Economics and Finance at New Economic School.
Ida is the CEO and co-founder of the leading female health tracking app, Clue. Born in Copenhagen, Ida graduated from Denmark’s prestigious creative business school, the KaosPilots. A lifelong entrepreneur, she previously led motorcycle tours around the world and published a book about her experience, “Direktøs” which became a Danish bestseller. She is recognized for coining the term “Femtech” to describe the sector of technology focused on improving women’s health.
William Tunstall-Pedoe is a British entrepreneur focused on world-changing products powered with Artificial Intelligence and other deep technology. He is based in Cambridge, UK and London but is also frequently in Toronto and both coasts of the US. His biggest recent achievement was founding the British company Evi, the AI platform acquired by Amazon and used to create Alexa. Today William focuses on advising and investing in other startups. He has personally invested in more than 40 early-stage technology startups, including Ada Health, where he is an investor and advisor. William is a full member of Cambridge Angels and a fellow of the Creative Destruction Lab in Toronto.
Since founding MessageBird in 2011, Robert has been at the frontlines of disrupting the trillion dollar telecom industry. Bootstrapped and profitable from inception, MessageBird provides cloud communications APIs, including SMS, Voice and Chat, that connect global enterprises to their customers worldwide. In 2017 they raised a $60 million Series A led by Accel in San Francisco with participation from Atomico in London, marking the largest Series A of any European software firm or Y Combinator alum to date. A true entrepreneur at heart, Robert believes in employee empowerment, staying scrappy, moving fast and breaking things. Prior to MessageBird, he was co-founder and CEO of Zaypay.com which primarily focused on driving mobile payments into 50+ countries, enabling 1.5bln users to pay for virtual goods through their mobile phones (sold to Mobile Interactive Group (MIG), later Velti (VELT Nasdaq), now mGage in 2011).
Gavin Wood was the Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of the Ethereum Project. He is the co-designer of the Ethereum Protocol, author of its formal specification, and is the creator and author of the first functional Ethereum implementation. Gavin Wood designed and stewarded the Solidity language, was the project chief of the IDE, and designed and implemented the Whisper protocol. He has pushed “state-of-the-art” in analysis tools and programming languages, as well as co-founded several technology startups.Gavin Wood has presented to numerous audiences around the world, from keynotes at regional technology conferences, to musings on the future of legal systems at Harvard. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of York. His new initiative is the Polkadot protocol, which will connect public and private blockchains so that they can inter-operate. This ambitious project could make it frictionless for corporations that wish to work in private blockchains to connect with public blockchains. Gavin is founder and current director of Parity Technologies Ltd. He has pushed the state-of-the-art in analysis tools and programming languages, as well as co-founded several technology startups, including Grid Singularity and Ethereum. He is the co-designer of the Ethereum Protocol and author of its formal specification, he created and wrote the first functional Ethereum implementation, designed and stewarded the Solidity language, was the project chief of the IDE, and designed and implemented the Whisper protocol.
In 1981, aged just 15, he construed and built one of the first skateboard halfpipes in Germany together with a few friends. Whilst studying for his degree in civil engineering he developed his first patent and in his capacity as “Serial Entrepreneur” and self made man he is now an entrepreneur through and through. With his enthusiasm and his firm belief in his vision regarding mobility of the future in the third dimension he brings much innovative buzz to the whole team
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