We couldn’t be more excited to introduce the first ever cohort of Seedrs Venture Partners. These individuals from our incredible UK startup ecosystem have super impressive credentials, from exited founders of IPO companies, Venture Capitalists from some of the UKs leading Venture firms, and influential leaders across our industry. These like minded individuals have come together to re define what it means to be a scout. To harness their collective powers to solve problems and do great things.
This programme is about so much more than just introducing great businesses to fund with Seedrs, this is about developing a community unlike any other here in the UK, a global network of like minded individuals from the different facets of our ecosystem. The Venture Partners are coming together, sharing ideas, opportunities, events, and news that will not only assist startups in our community, but also actively support them as they face the realities of operating during these uncertain times.
So a huge welcome to the Seedrs VP1 cohort:
Dan is Co Founder of Braincare company, Heights, Host of one of Europe s top business podcasts, Secret Leaders, Co-Founder & President of the Foundrs Community, & an angel investor in over 50 startups (mostly consumer, wellness & web3).
1 IPO, 2 Acquisitions, 3 Unicorns. Founder of Hiphops a DevOps Infrastructure startup backed by Firstminute capital and Seedcamp. Ex VP of Europe for Digital Currency Group’s consumer arm, Luno. Launched Ziglu (acquired by Robinhood) and scaled to 100,000 customers in the first year. Previously Commercial Director for Mobike (acquired by Meituan) growing it to 220M MAUs until the $55B IPO. Yang is one of the 2021 Forbes 30 under 30 cohort.
Adam has over 20 years UK & Global brand marketing experience with strong breadth and depth across disruptor growth brands in green tech, gaming, entertainment, lifestyle, FMCG and not for profit. He has overseen brands including PlayStation, Absolut Vodka, Havana Club, Malibu as well at NCS changing the lives of 16-17 year olds and now most recently tackling the climate crisis at Ecologi. He combines creative brand building with a digital first, data driven approach to drive performance growth.
Susanne Chishti is the CEO of FINTECH Circle Europe s 1st fintech angel investor network focused on early stage investments across the fintech industry (both B2C and B2B), a FTSE 250 Board Member and an active Fintech Investor herself. Susanne is also the Editor of The FINTECH Book Series published by Wiley. She is a Non-Executive Director at CMC Markets PLC, Crown Agents Bank & Chair of Lenderwize the leading fintech platform for digital commodities. Susanne is a global Keynote speaker and has won many awards as top fintech leader & influencer (Refinitiv, Business Leaders and Onalytica 2020), Fintech Champion of the Year 2019, Top 7 Crypto Experts by Inc Magazine and been chosen among the Top 5 ESG Influencers Globally by Refinitiv.
Steven’s professional background is in the Lloyds Insurance market where he was a broker and was involved in a number of insurance startups in the UK and South Africa.
He is now a business advisor and holds a number of non executive positions in start up and growth companies. He also provides consultancy services across all business sectors, with various advisory board positions as well as mentoring to individuals.
Eduard’s professional background is made by a healthy mixture of finance and startup building expertise. In April 2022, Eduard joined Techstars in the Portfolio Capital team as an Investor Manager, leading all fundraising activities for EMEA based Techstars portfolio companies. Eduard has been an advocate for London Tech Advocates since 2018 as well as a startup advisor, currently helping startups in various industries. He is also an active angel investor and launched his own Angel Syndicate in January 2020 called 6NINE26.
Henrik has been a founder, an angel investor and an investment banker, and he enjoys being a deliberate generalist. During his degree, he founded a tech startup, a social enterprise and began angel investing through crowdfunding platforms. His social navigation and discovery startup RendezVu grew to over a thousand global users and access led tutoring marketplace The Oxbridge Initiative was live in six countries.
Henrik joined Playfair for the launch of Fund II in 2019 and has since led seven investments in new companies and enjoys actively supporting their founders on and off their boards. He was recently named as one of Sifted s Top 30 Young Venture Capitalists.
Avin Rabheru is an entrepreneur, early stage investor and non executive director. He is Founder and CEO of Housekeep.com, which became the UK market leader in the £10 billion house and office cleaner market 3 years after launch. The business has raised two VC/angel investment rounds, winning Deal of the Year in 2014, and has since raised cleaner earnings 2x and received 250,000 5 customer reviews. Housekeep has won multiple awards including Service Business of the Year and Avin was named a StartUps Young Gun in 2016. The Financial Times named Housekeep the 6th fastest growing business in Europe in 2019. Prior to launching Housekeep, Avin was a venture capital investor and remains an active angel investor, with 40+ investments in consumer technology businesses. Prior to this, Avin worked in strategy consulting, investment banking and read PPE at Oxford University, where he won the Harold Wilson prize.
Launched, scaled & sold quick grocery delivery company Fancy (YC S20) to US unicorn GoPuff. Previously responsible for new business incubation & investments for Lando Norris’ family including Europe’s largest micro mobility retailer, Pure Electric. Led corporate development and strategy for the Swarovski family, as well as the World Economic Forum in Davos and established the UK presence for global investment firm, Alignvest.
Courtney is the Founder & CEO of Paradym, a modern mental health app programme with personalized resilience courses for Gen Z’s and Millennials who want to change their lives and find fulfillment. Paradym is a community of over 50k people across 150+ countries.
Paradym is evidence based, and has been featured in the Journal of Medical Internet Research, Vogue, The Telegraph, Stella, Dazed, and was voted Rising Star by Georgetown University.
Courtney is half Swedish, half Filipina, born in Chicago, USA, and raised in London. She has lived and worked in Chicago, DC, New York, Paris, Singapore and Paris and speaks French, a bit of Tagalog, Swedish, Italian and she learnt Mandarin for 5 years. She has a BA from Georgetown University in Political Economy and Philosophy, and an MBA from London Business School.
Jack is a serial entrepreneur (including Urban.co UK’s leading marketplace for wellness services), advisor and angel investor across various web 2 and web 3 companies. Recent investments include Tesseract Energy (Tokenised renewable energy company), Sourceful (Packaging sourcing for B2B) and Collective Benefits (insurance for flexible workers).
Dr Hannah Forbes is a crowdfunding expert having completed a PhD in Crowdfunding and run over 100 rewards and equity campaigns. She has a 100% success rate and has clients across Europe, North America and Asia. She was voted as a Top 100 Woman in FinTech, placed on the Innovate UK Finance Powerlist and won a Women in Finance Award in 2021. Alongside her work at The Funding Crowd, she has conducted research in Alternative Finance at Cambridge Judge Business School and run workshops with Techstars, Sky and Barclays Eagle Labs.
As a community builder, diversity advocate, and project management professional, Brian Lucksinger received his bachelor degree in Entrepreneurship and Marketing from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He spent time working for Universal Studios Hollywood, Macy’s Inc, and Hellofresh before taking his current role as Director of Community & Special Projects at Gaingels (a leading LGBTQIA+/Allies investment syndicate, and one of the largest and most active private investors in North America).
Julien Callede is the co founder of Made.com, one of the fastest growing European startup success stories, which became a Unicorn IPO in 2021. Julien has co founded and participated in several new projects related to sustainable brands, education, health, sports, and mental wellness sush as NextMomentum.io, Cocoli.com, TheCirkel.com, Eclobeauty.com and Standard deviation.co.. He spends a large part of his time between London, Paris, and Barcelona, working with the executive committees and boards of large corporations willing to challenge their business model. He also works with startups looking to break the code of the current market.
Talia is the Head of Product at Connectr, mentoring software in the Tech for Good landscape. With a background in psychology, she has always been interested in human behaviour and understanding how you can build products that solve real user problems that people also love to use.
She has worked through the product management career path, and now spends her days working with her team of product people making sure they are empowered to make good decisions, whilst steering the product mission and vision both internally and externally. Her team includes specialist expertise in Product Management, Design, Research and Data. She is incredibly passionate about championing women in technology and is proud to be one of the organisers behind Women in Product London.