Wendy Tan White MBE is a Partner at BGF Ventures, the £200m early stage tech fund. She was General Partner at Entrepreneur First, building deep tech companies with a £40m Next Stage Fund and programme. Wendy was CEO and co-founder of SaaS website builder Moonfruit before selling to Yell Group for $37m.
She is a Board Trustee of the Alan Turing Institute, Member of UK Digital Economy Council, on the Board of TechCityUK and Imperial College, DoC. She was awarded an MBE for services to business and technology in 2016 and Women in IT, Business Role Model of the Year 2017.
She is married to Joe White, they have a 13 yr old son and 10 yr old daughter and live in West London. To relax she practices Shaolin KungFu and enjoys subversive knitting.
Hannah Meiton is the Chief Growth Officer at Soundtrack Your Brand, the Spotify-backed company founded in 2013 on a mission to kill bad background music. Prior to Soundtrack, Hannah has a long experience from the software start-up world, mainly in Silicon Valley, where her main focus has been on growth and sales for SaaS companies within innovative industries; the most recent one prior to joining Soundtrack Your Brand was iZettle the mobile payments company.
Boel Swartling has a business background as marketing manager and general manager in the IT/media/consumer goods sectors. She has a passion for business development and entrepreneurship and has served on a number of boards and committees related to startup activities and the Stockholm startup scene. For the past 10 years her main focus has been investment management and direct investments in social- and environmental impact startups.
Christian has more than 24 years of entrepreneurial and investment experience. He was Chairman of the Board of Tipp24 AG and Interhyp AG, which returned more than 50x the original Earlybird investment. Up till the trade sale to SMSC he also served on the board of BridgeCo AG.
He currently serves on the boards of CrossEngage (Berlin), N26 (Berlin), ShapeShift (Zug/Denver), 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.
David is a Partner at 83North – a global venture capital firm with offices in Israel and London. David was, until 31 March 2017, Chief Executive Officer of JUST EAT, and was appointed as a Non-executive Director in August 2017. David joined Just Eat in March 2006 to start its UK business after having a successful career with Coca-Cola.
David holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Law and Business from Middlesex University Business School and an Honorary Doctorate Degree in Entrepreneurship.
In 2014, David was named Entrepreneur of the Year at the Investor Allstars Awards, and was listed as one of the London Evening Standard’s top 1,000 influential people. In 2015, 2016 and 2017 he was named as one of Britain’s most influential people in the Debrett’s 500.
Grant leads ABB’s innovation efforts in Silicon Valley and invests in companies across North America and Western Europe.
Before joining ABB in 2010, Allen was with Core Capital Partners, a $400 million venture fund based in Washington, DC focused on investments in enterprise software and network security. Prior to that, he was with Microsoft in their Mobile & Embedded Devices division; Jingle Networks; and several start-ups including a web services firm he founded at 19. Allen has also invested personally in a number of companies including Uber, Alibaba, LivingSocial, AltspaceVR, Avizia and EquityZen, and is a founding member of NextGen Angels.
He is an advisor to numerous startups and an invited speaker at SXSW, the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit and the Watt D’Or Swiss-US Energy Innovation Day where ABB received Best Achievement in the Energy Sector. Grant holds degrees from Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and has completed executive education at IMD Business School in Lausanne, Switzerland.
As General Partner at investment firm Alfvén & Didrikson, Miriam is focused on backing passionate entrepreneurs and talented teams across Northern Europe. Prior to joining Alfvén & Didrikson in 2017, she spent 5 years as a Corporate VC at Schibsted Growth where she worked with and led investments in consumer technology, fintech and marketplace companies such as Lendo, Prisjakt, Hygglo, Albert and many more. Miriam is also a former entrepreneur, startup CEO and X-Facebook.
Nanna joined H&M’s venture arm CO:LAB in January 2016 as Investment manager and heads CO:LAB since fall 2017. Prior to joining CO:LAB, Nanna was Investment Manager at a Swedish investment company, entrepreneur within the health sector and Business developer/part of Management team for sports fashion company Peak Performance.
Nanna is passionate about business, entrepreneurship and start-ups. In her spare time, she loves to work out, go running and hit the slopes. Nanna serves on the board for the Athleisure brand ADAY and as an advisor to the Swedish startup Sellpy.
Sara is Investment Manager at venture capital firm Industrifonden, scouting for ambitious tech entrepreneurs and founders. Her previous experience include working with business development and investments at Schibsted and Blocket. Today, Sara sits on the board for SaaS-company DPOrganizer, consumer marketplace Fyndiq and is also the chairman for the social impact company Welcome App.
Susana Quintana Plaza has recently joined Siemens’ next47 as a Partner, coming from the E.ON Group where she was Senior Vice President of Technology and Innovation. In a previous role, as Vice President of Scouting & Co-investments, she was responsible for creating and operating the Corporate Venture Capital activities for E.ON.
She has nearly 20 years of work experience in the aerospace and energy industries with Boeing, Booz & Co, GE and E.ON. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and Bachelor and a Masters in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Washington. Susana lives in London. In her free time she loves to spend time with her husband and two children and travel
the world.
