Speakers
General Partner Meron Capital
Founder & Partner Blossom Capital
Partner Passion Capital
Partner Accel
Partner Kima Ventures
VP of Corporate development Lilium
Managing Partner Cavalry Ventures
Partner Seventure Partners
Executive Chairman and Co-Founder Founders Factory
Partner Seedcamp
Founder & Managing Partner HCVC
Partner Balderton Capital
Partner Felix Capital
Seed Club Manager Isai
Co-Founder KR1
Founding Partner Ada Ventures
Director STATION F
Co-Founder & CEO The Family
Liron is a General Partner at Meron Capital and has over 10 years of experience in the investment and tech industries. Liron also manages the Young Venture Capital Forum in Israel – a professional organization connecting over 150 young partners, principals and associates from all VC firms in Israel. Prior to joining Meron Capital, Liron was a Principal at Blumberg Capital and led Cyber, SaaS, Marketing-tech and Infrastructure IT deals. Prior to that, she was a Strategy and M&A consultant at Bain Capital and PwC’s PE group in New York, where she lead commercial and operational due-diligence projects for the largest private equity firms in the US. Before moving to the US, Liron was a technical Applications Engineer at Agilent Technologies, where she worked with blue-chip clients in Europe, Asia and the US. Liron has an MBA from MIT-Sloan, an M.Sc. in Computer Science from MIT and a B.Sc. in Math and Physics from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. At 25, she was the youngest student ever to graduate MIT’s dual MBA / M.Sc. degree program. She started her bachelor’s degree at Talpiot, the elite Israeli Defense Forces program, and completed it while serving full-time as a technology analyst and researcher at the Israeli intelligence unit 8200.
Ophelia Brown is the founder of Blossom Capital, an early-stage venture fund.
Eileen Burbidge is a partner at Passion Capital, an early-stage technology venture fund based in London, and is also the UK Treasury’s Special Envoy for Fintech.
Sonali joined the Accel team in London in 2008 and has witnessed the European ecosystem come of age firsthand. She focuses on consumer (especially marketplace), next generation financial services and software companies. Sonali was responsible for Accel’s investments in Spotify, which went public in 2018; Letgo, which joined forces with OfferUP in 2020, and Avito, which was acquired in 2015 by Naspers. In addition, Sonali led Accel’s investment in Calastone, which was acquired by The Carlyle Group in October 2020. Sonali’s current portfolio contains a number of high-potential companies, including: Kry, the pan-European digital health platform; Monzo, the digital, mobile-only bank; Primer, the automation platform for payments and commerce; Shift Technology, the leader in AI-driven fraud software; sennder, Europe’s number one digital freight forwarder; Soldo, the spend management platform, and Wallapop, the mobile marketplace for online goods. Recent investments include eldercare online marketplace Lottie, Omnea, the AI-powered procurement orchestration and supplier risk management platform, and Taito.ai, which automates performance enablement with AI. Prior to Accel, Sonali was a partner at Atlas Venture. Sonali was born and raised in Bombay, India. She attended Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and holds an MBA from Harvard Business School.
In charge of Kima Ventures, the venture capital arm of Xavier Niel (founder of Free, 42, Station F). Investing in about 100 new startups every year, managing a portfolio of 600+ companies to date. Board Member at Zenly, Sourced, Ibanfirst, Forest Admin, Payfit and Side.
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.
Rouven Dresselhaus is Founding and Managing Partner of Cavalry Ventures. He has a deep understanding of the digital economy and simultaneously, Rouven possesses strong ties to the old economy as he grew up closely connected to his family’s business, Dresselhaus GmbH & Co KG, one of the largest providers of screws and fastening parts in Europe. Other than taking the Founders Pledge, he is an avid supporter of and donor for YUNUS Social Business to generate sustainable social impact. Further, Rouven is a regular speaker on several important events and conferences such as Heureka, Wolves Summit, NGIN Mobility, IdeaLab!, EBSpreneurship Forum and the Familienunternehmer-Kongress. He is also a mentor at a number of different accelerator programs like Techstars, Techstars SAP.io, next logistics accelerator and the Axel Springer Plug and Play Accelerator. Prior to Cavalry, Rouven invested privately in more than 35 startups worldwide. Rouven started his career at KPMG as a consultant in the Financial Risk Management practice. He then supported Morten Sondergaard in his investment activities and joined the early/mid stage VC fund Capnamic Ventures as Investment Manager. Rouven holds a M.Sc. in Business Administration from EBS Business School, Oestrich-Winkel (with distinction) and a Master of Finance from EAE Business School, Barcelona (honors). He is married and father to a son.
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.
Biotech engineer, Ph.D. in philosophy of capitalism, Sebastien started his career as a VC more than 15 years ago at CDC-Entreprises. He co-founded the venture arm of Masseran Gestion (Groupe Caisses d’Epargne) in 2008, managing FCPIs and investing in the life sciences sector. Masseran Gestion merged which Seventure Partners in 2012. He then became a Partner in life sciences at Seventure. Sebastien has invested in more than 30 companies and is currently board member of Balyo, Global Bioenergies, Eligo, Domain Therapeutics, and Skinjay. He can be reached at sebastien.groyer@seventure.fr.
Brent Hoberman is chairman and co-founder of Founders Factory, an ambitious corporate backed incubator/accelerator based in London, and also of Founders Forum, a series of intimate annual global events for the leading entrepreneurs of today and the rising stars of tomorrow. Brent is a co-founder and was founding chairman of Smartup, Grip & made.com, a leading European direct-from-factory consumer homewares retailer. Most recently, Brent co-founded Firstminute Capital, a London-based pan-European seed fund, backed by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs. Brent co-founded lastminute.comin April 1998, was CEO from its inception and sold it in 2005 to Sabre for $1.1bn. Technology businesses he has co-founded have raised over $500m. Brent sits on the Advisory board for LetterOne Technology (a $16bn investment fund), the Oxford Foundry and the UK Government Digital Advisory Board. He is a board member of The Economist, a YGL and one of the Prime Minister’s Business Trade Ambassadors. Brent was awarded a CBE for services to entrepreneurship in the 2015 New Year’s Honour’s List.
Sia is a Partner at Seedcamp, the European seed fund that has invested in over 250 groundbreaking startups including the likes of fintech unicorn Transferwise, Revolut, UiPath and wefox. Sia sources world-class founders for Seedcamp to invest from across the continent and supports portfolio companies as they go from pre-seed to Series A and beyond. Sia has a pan-European background, growing up in Switzerland before then studying in Spain and the UK. He holds a MSc in International Management from ESADE Business School. Before joining Seedcamp, he gained experience crunching numbers and analysing data in large financial services companies such as EY and UBS Asset Management. Sia has invested in hundreds of companies at pre-seed and seed stages across Seedcamp’s diverse portfolio and has a particular interest in Fintech, blockchain and more generally businesses that smartly leverage data to shake up large, old-fashioned industries. In 2018, Forbes included Sia in its “30 Under 30 Europe” list in the category finance.
Alexis is the managing partner of Hardware Club which he co-founded in 2015. Through its unique $50M early-stage fund, Hardware Club invests in early-stage full-stack startups globally. Alexis took part in launching several initiatives including the Hello Tomorrow and The Family. He sits on the boards of companies including Cowboy, Remedee Labs, Norbert Health and several stealth companies.
Raffi joined Alven in 2011. He started his career as an engineer, joining Bouygues Telecom where he worked on core data networks. Priorto joining Alven, he was part of the venture capital team of the Parisian office of Gimv, a pan-European fund where he focused on tech investments. He graduated from Ensimag and holds an MBA from Insead.
Rob joined Balderton Capital in 2009 and was promoted to partner in 2015. He is currently a board director or observer with five portfolio companies: Carwow, Wooga, Nutmeg, Prodigy Finance, and Patients Know Best. Other investments he has worked with at Balderton include Qubit, Citymapper, Housetrip, Scoot and Archify. Rob’s focus sector is fintech, in particular insurance and retail financial services. Marketing is a particular area of interest, and Rob is responsible for best practice sharing in marketing across the portfolio. Prior to joining Balderton, Rob worked for Google in London, as a Manager in the European Strategy and Operations team. He started his career with five years in strategy consulting with Bain, and holds an MBA from INSEAD and a Masters in Statistics from Cambridge.
Antoine is a Partner and member of the founding team of Felix Capital. He currently sits on the boards of TravelPerk, Papier, Frichti, Heetch and Urban Massage. He previously was a Partner at Atlas Global, a private equity fund originally part of GLG Partners. Prior to Felix Capital he has worked closely with various early-stage digital startups including Mirakl, Reedsy, 31Dover, Pave.com and actively helped them launch their businesses. He has also been involved since inception with Huckletree, a fast growing coworking operator dedicated to the European digital community which was started by his wife. Antoine moved to London in 2006 when he joined ABN AMRO as an M&A investment banker. Prior to this he was based in Paris and was part of the founding team of NT Valley, a software business aim at retailers. He started his career as a brand and intangible asset valuation consultant at Sorgem Evaluation. A graduate of ESCP European Business School and University Paris Dauphine, Antoine is fluent in English, French and Spanish.
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.
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
Francesca (known as Check) is one of the founding partners of Ada Ventures. Francesca is also the co-founder and CEO of Diversity VC, a non-profit made up of interested individuals working in venture capital, who seek to increase diversity of thought in the venture and tech industry. She’s worked at Seraphim Capital, Downing Ventures and Techstars. She graduated from Cambridge and worked in advertising before joining the VC industry. Francesca was named 35 Under 35 in Management Today 2018 and Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe in 2019.
Roxanne Varza is Director of STATION F, the biggest startup campus in the world with more than 1.000 startups, located in Paris. She is originally from Silicon Valley. Before joining STATION F, she led Microsoft Ventures Paris and TechCrunch France. She also worked for several London-based startups and cofounded StarHer, Tech.eu and Failcon France.
Prior to her current role, Roxanne was the lead for Microsoft’s start-up activities in France, running both Bizspark and Microsoft Ventures programs for 3 years. She was also Editor of TechCrunch France from 2010-2011 and has written for several publications including Business Insider and The Telegraph. In April 2013, Business Insider listed her as one of the top 30 women under 30 in tech. She has also been listed in additional rankings by Business Insider, Vanity Fair and Le Figaro, The Evening Standard and more.
Roxanne also co-founded StartHer (ex Girls in Tech Paris) and is the co-organizer of the Failcon Paris conference. More recently, she co-founded Tech.eu, a European tech media backed by Dave McClure, Adeo Ressi, Daniel Waterhouse and more.
Prior to TechCrunch, Roxanne worked for the French government’s foreign direct investment agency helping fast-growing startups develop their activities in France. Roxanne has spoken, moderated, mentored and judged numerous startup events and programs throughout Europe and also helps European startups with content and communications. Roxanne is trilingual and holds degrees from UCLA, Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics. She is also an epilepsy advocate.
Alice Zagury was born into a family driven by the progressive ideals of the 1960s, a world full of music, art and culture. Growing up in the suburbs, she felt and saw the discrimination and underlying racism around her. The 2008 crisis exacerbated things, reinforcing just how incapable their society was at integrating young people and minorities. She discovered the tech world almost by accident. She first worked with art galleries and artists’ collectives, and then some engineers, before She was struck with the desire to help those new players of economic growth, startups. The digital world used fresh tools that could defeat those barriers that she had always seen: a culture of sharing, of learning from one’s errors, that valorizes “doing”.
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