FUNDstars & FOUNDstars from NOTWICS

In our last ever FOUNDstar and FUNDstar Vod/Pod we talk to Dominic Vergine of leading Electric Motor Scale Up, Monumo. Dominic is a true visionary who heralds from the hotbed of UK Tech, Cambridge and is another legend of the ARM stable of leading Technologists. In terms of Monumo, Dominic highlights how he and the team at Monumo are working to:# Create a new wave of sustainably designed Electric...

Priya is an impressive Venture Capitalist, who established Goddess Gaia Ventures <GGV> to assist with Women's Health and Wellness. She established GGV on the back of personal circumstances and wanted to fix many of the problems facing Female Founders the Healthcare and Wellness industry. In terms of nuggets:===> Priya explains what she is looking for in terms of female founders in Hea...

In our first FUNDstar Vod/pod of 2024, we sit down with leading VC, Sam Nasrolahi at InMotion Ventures, the Corporate VC arm of Jaguar Land Rover.  She's a super intelligent and very direct investor and she certainly knows mobility from a very strong background at BP. I certainly learn't a lot in this 26 minute Podcast Sam conducted with Anthony and I, pre Xmas 2023. In terms of InMotion V...

King of Scandi Tech takes time out of his hectic schedule, to share his perspectives on scaling amazing consumer businesses, ranging from smart headphones (Marshall, Adidas, Urban Ears) with Zound Industries to more recently creating the "Tesla of the Seas",  X Shore Konrad continues to grow his consumer portfolio and is now looking at Natural Chemicals, in the world of Cleantech and has...

After an extended summer break, due to personal reasons, its nice to be back broadcasting and publishing season 6 of FUNDstars and FOUNDstars, where our guest was Rob Desborough,  the CEO of Seraphim Space Accelerator, and a partner in the Seraphim Space Fund. There is no disguising Space is hot  and Rob provides an array of opinions on several hot topics: # How Seraphim is the largest investment...

Ben is the Director of the University of Southampton's Futureworlds, a business that takes the best bits of accelerators / University innovation and Technological excellence, providing opportunities for students at the University to commercialise and scale. Ben provides an array of opinions on several hot topics: #How the Futureworlds model works and the businesses being created # The current...

In this episode our Europe 2023 Roadshow, landed in Berlin, where we meet Robin Rohm, a leader in the world of Federated Learning, which helps solve the problem of securely analysing data across boundaries and regulated industries. He took a bit of time out from his Rocketship... Apheris who are early market leaders in this "machine learning on steriods" to talk with us in mid February,...

In this episode we have a great insight into La French Tech, a term widely associated with Mr Macron and his Digital based ascendancy in France, but in this episode, it's from Clement Aglietta, the founder of leading Fintech, Edda, one of the poster-boys (children) of the current French Tech Revolution. Clement provides some lovely insights on the business, their approach and also waxes lyrical wi...

First up for 2023 is our interesting catch - up with leading Amsterdam based Seed and Series A VC - Kompas. In this episode we talk with founding partner, Sebastian Peck, when he's in transit between meetings in Munich. Sebastian covers a vast array of topics in this insightful 33 minutes conversation with Anthony and I. Kompas is a leading Digital Transformation / Net Zero focused / Zero Waste Ci...

We had an awesome time catching up with Sarah, the CEO of Jenson Funding Partners, one of the UK's largest and most successful SEIS investors. Sarah was particularly keen to tell us about their new £60m Aurora fund, for pre-seed to Series A companies helping the transition to Net Zero. Chris first met Sarah in his Bloomberg days in 2013, when she highlighted the early intentions of Jenson, so it w...

After autumn impasse, we return with our winter series of interesting Podcasts, with a number of leading lights in the UK Tech industry. First up is Peter Finnie, a leading Tech Patents lawyer in the UK who shows us that lawyers are fun, good to talk too and so knowledgeable for Founders and VCs alike. Remember the top one's cover both! Peter deep dives and offers some great pearls of advice such...

In this episode, we continue our summer focus (yes - there's another heatwave on the way in London to justify this !!)  on leading ladies in the Tech space, talking here to a particularly successful founder in the Health-Tech vertical, Lara Mott. Chris first met Lara, six years ago, when she was pondering on exiting her successful corporate career to scratch the entrepreneurial itch and launc...

Fittingly, I write this summary of a great Vod/podcast, with a leading lady of the UK VC scene, England’s women have just scored their first goal against Austria !! This episode focuses on Evie Mulberry, the Managing Partner of Astia VC, a leading San Francisco based VC, who has recently returned to the UK build the UK/EU footprint of the fund. Evie highlights how Astia – was built by the super im...

Harriet Rosethorn is second up in our summer series on leading women in VC and Technology. We speak to Harriet in February 2022 and she takes great time to firstly explain that Puma has nothing whatsoever to do with the German Sport apparel brand !!! She, in fact, joined London based Puma PE, 4 years ago as an investment manager. They are a leading Series A investor in UK and do look at some Europ...

Phoebe Arkell is first up in our summer series on leading women in VC and Technology. Phoebe is certainly one of the up and coming VCs who successful navigated a career in consulting to follow her dream of becoming a VC. She joined London based, Supernode Global, just before the pandemic and quickly found their focus on investing at the seed stage in digital content, was perfectly suited to t...

Jatin Ondhia is an inspirational leader who set up Shojin Property Partners in 2009 and has navigated the pandemic to grow a successful, scaling Property Technology business. Jatin originally saw the value of investing in property, whilst working as a banker at UBS for 12 years. From its onset, Shojin was like an angel club, which has evolved into an online regulated Technology platform, democrati...

Paul decided to build Careology when personal circumstances highlighted how there are very few, real-time technology solutions to help people manage the treatment process and support processes around cancer, for the: person, care-giver and the clinical team. Three years later, it appears to be going well and Paul, an experienced entrepreneur shares his thoughts on the many challenges of the journe...

Rich is the CEO and Co-Founder of Peak. AI, one of the up and coming Unicorns  of the UK Tech scene and Manchester's finest. They are a Decision Intelligence leader (using AI and Cognitive Intelligence to make consistently strong decisions) working with Retailers like Superdry and AO.Com, CPGs like KFC and some leading UK & Global PLC manufacturing companies  too!! Universally these...

Adrian provides some great insight into about his journey, from studying Mandarin, to consultancy and then his time at Stanford University, where he decided that he really wanted to be an investor. So upon returning to London .. Adrian, Damien Lane and Dr Simon Murdoch decided to go for it and launch their first fund at Episode 1, with the support of the British Business Bank Adrian covers many ar...

Chris is a really interesting Entrepreneur who successfully grew and exited his business extremely successfully.  His childhood was tumultuous but gave him early life skills, which saw him grow and learn how to overcome challenges like Dyslexia (a condition that many leading founders interesting have suffered. We talk late summer 2021, when the UK was in the midst of first UK energy crisis (w...

Jonny and James take 30 minutes, to introduce their awesome new London based VC, Volution VC and their unique approach to funding innovative Technology Scale-Ups. They are both experienced practitioners of the Private Technology finance space and spotted a gap to fund founders in in the post Series A  / Series B space in Enterprise Software SaaS & Fintech space, with the creation of Volut...

Suranga Chandratillake, a General Partner at Balderton, in London, is a legend in the world of UK and European VC. So it was great to spend time with one of the biggest players in the world of late stage private Tech, as a record year of UK Tech exits and IPO's drew to a close. Prior to Balderton, Suranga led  one of the UK Technology winners of the noughties, Blinkx. Like all great Technolog...

In a punchy, direct episode, we hear from Oli Hammond at Fuel Ventures, one of the fastest growing UK VC investors in the Seed space. Oli is a talented VC and has a super eye for spotting a lot of the latest Tech Gems, in the UK Early Stage space. By means of background, Oli joined the fund from Syndicate Room, an interesting Cambridge based investor, whom Chris worked with at Bloomberg, when Oli...

As it's Thanksgiving Weekend - we only thought it was right to showcase an American VC in this episode, so get ready for this episode with Maria Palma of Kindred Capital and Anthony Lyall, our in house, US team member taking centre stage. Maria is a straight-talking, super-bright American based in London with the super edgy Kindred Capital. Kindred are a clever & successful fund, with a unique...

We talk today to Marc Young, a skilled artisan in the world of finance, who de-mystifies the arena of debt, an area that most founders look upon with fear, but at ADG Pref Cap, they have a perfectly sensible product and fund, specifically focused on B2B Software start-ups. ADG itself is a diversified Asset Management company, which offers a lovely umbrella to the fund, business and regulation.&nbs...