Founder and Managing Partner play a crucial role in any startup. It takes an extraordinary person to fulfil the Founder and Managing Partner role. We have selected these Founder and Managing Partner’s for this list as they are inspiring for a variety of reasons – whether that’s pushing boundaries, creating groundbreaking products, or doing their bit to save the world.
Our analysts did their best to select be best, and most innovative Founder and Managing Partner’s. The list is in no particular order!
Frederic Court
Founder and Managing Partner @ Felix Capital
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Frederic is the Founder and Managing Partner of Felix Capital. He has worked in the technology industry for the past 20 years, prior to Felix as General Partner with Advent Ventures in London, and previously as an entrepreneur. At Felix, Frederic works closely with Farfetch (NYSE:FTCH), goop, Mejuri, Yoobic, The Business of Fashion, Highsnobiety and Mirakl. He led the growth investments in Deliveroo and Peloton. While at Advent, Frederic led investments in Farfetch, Zong (sold to eBay), Vitrue (Oracle), Dailymotion (Orange), Qype (Yelp), Fizzback (Nice Systems) and Ubiquisys (Cisco). Frederic was named “Investor of the Year” in Europe by his peers at the 2012 Investor All Stars event. He was on the Midas List Europe 2017 and 2018. Previously he was an entrepreneur in France, building a VC-backed online marketplace for the textile industry, and before that a technology banker in London and New York with Lazard. A graduate of ESSEC in Paris and Bocconi University in Milan, Frederic is fluent in English, French, Italian and Spanish.
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Peter Dubens
Founder and Managing Partner @ Oakley Capital
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Peter is currently the founder and head of Oakley Capital. Prior to founding Oakley, Peter was instrumental in establishing 365 Media as one of the UK’s leading online sports content providers. Peter subsequently led the sale of the company to BSkyB in December 2006 for £110 million. He was also Executive Chairman of Pipex, the AIM listed provider of integrated telecommunications and Internet services, where he led the strategic development and execution of 14 acquisitions building one of the UK’s largest broadband suppliers. Pipex was sold for £330 million. Peter has over 21 years of operating experience and over the course of his career has bought, sold and restructured over 40 businesses.
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Alan Vaksman
Founder and Managing Partner @ Digital Horizon
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Alan is an experienced financial services executive with extensive investment banking , risk, and venture capital experience. Recent experience includes focus on venture capital investments in early stage Fintech and B2B SAAS companies. Alan is the Chairman and co-founder of Digital Horizon VC, early stage venture capital fund and venture builder. He is co-founder and director at YesGrowth UK. He also acts as an independent chairman GPB Switzerland and director at Amsterdam Trade bank and chairman of ANNA money U.K.
Learn more about Alan Vaksman on Crunchbase…Digital Horizon is an international investment company that combines a venture fund and a venture builder. It invests at Series A onwards. Read more about Digital Horizon on Crunchbase…
Ammad Ahmad
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Atheneum
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Ammad has a comprehensive understanding of the key levers that drive better business performance given his experience in implementing industry specific best practices across various Fortune 100 companies. Prior to founding Atheneum, he spent 13 years in the United States, with significant experience at Kaiser Associates, and the Advisory Board Company. Ammad is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, and has a Masters from the WHU School of Management together with the Bucerius Law School in Germany.
Learn more about Ammad Ahmad on Crunchbase… Read more about Atheneum on Crunchbase…
Manish Madhvani
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ GP Bullhound
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Manish Madhvani is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of GP Bullhound. Manish has executed M&A and capital raising transactions since 1997, involving some of the best known global internet, software and media companies, including: Spotify, King.com, Believe Digital, WPP, Wipro, Fjord, Hearst Corporation, Accenture, Newscorp and Experian. Manish who was selected as one of the top 40 dealmakers globally by M&A Advisor, started his career at Barclays Capital’s Private Equity team. He has advised the Treasury on Entrepreneurship and graduated from Southampton University with an LLB in Law / MA in Marketing. Manish is a regular speaker on Bloomberg and CNBC and is currently an Ambassador for London Technology Week. He was recognised as one of the leading Entrepreneurs in the UK by the Sunday Times / Maserati 100.
Learn more about Manish Madhvani on Crunchbase… Read more about GP Bullhound on Crunchbase…
Mark Storey
Founder and Managing Partner @ Alcuin Capital Partners
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Mark Storey has over twenty years private equity and mezzanine experience, having worked for BancBoston Capital since 1986 prior to co-founding Alcuin. Mark has a BA Hons in History from Balliol College, Oxford and an MA from Birkbeck, London.
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David Leftley
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Bloc Ventures
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David has more than 30 years global technology industry experience in start-ups and multi-nationals as an engineer, manager, director and investor. From 1983 he worked as a design engineer in the defence industry, specialising in radar and airborne electronic countermeasures, first at Cossor Electronics and then at Racal Defence. In 1987 he moved into the TV and film industry, working for Abacus Cox and then Vistek on the design of the world’s first digital TV production technology. In this time he progressed to become R&D Manager and later became General Manager. In 1996, as CTO he founded Digital Vision UK for DV AB of Sweden, a world leader in video compression, transmission and post production technology, securing contracts with the BBC, several Hollywood studios and customers as far afield as China. In 1999 DV AB successfully went to an IPO. In 2009 he joined Vodafone’s corporate venture team as head of its European activity, closing numerous investments in Mobile Health, Clean Tech, Infrastructure and Financial Tech services. In this time the fund ranked in the top 5 CVCs, achieved an IRR of 27% and in 2012 received an industry award for its exit of portfolio company Amobee for $321M. In 2010 David was ranked in Wired Magazine’s top 100 innovators’ list. He represented Vodafone on the boards of nine portfolio companies. In April 2013 David departed Vodafone to establish Bloc Ventures with Bruce. He has a Bachelor of Science (Honours) degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Aston Birmingham, and is a Chartered Engineer.
Learn more about David Leftley on Crunchbase… Read more about Bloc Ventures on Crunchbase…
Edward Beckett
Co-founder and Managing Partner @ Longbow Capital
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Edward is Managing Partner of Longbow focusing on investment activity and ongoing support for portfolio companies. He has advised on, participated in or led investments into over twenty early stage companies across a broad range of sectors. He is non executive director of Cyden Ltd, DTV Group Ltd and Direct Health Ltd. Edward has undertaken a wide range of venture capital, project finance and investment initiatives including food, drink and medical supplies in Russia during the early 1990s, and the acquisition and development of leisure businesses in the UK.
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Hugh Campbell
Founder and Managing Partner @ GP Bullhound
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Hugh Campbell is a Founder and Managing Partner of GP Bullhound. Hugh is passionate about technology innovation and entrepreneurs with 15 years’ experience advising and investing in Europe’s current and future Unicorns. He has worked with all the leading growth equity funds in Europe and has sold businesses to Real Networks, Tesco, Disney, Accenture and Experian amongst others. Hugh started his career at Citibank in M&A before moving on to Goldman Sachs where he worked in Equity Research. Hugh is from an entrepreneurial publishing family who sold John Murray Publishers to Hachette in 2002 and founded an e-learning business, Pastest Limited, where Hugh is Chairman. In 2000, Hugh left Goldman Sachs and spent most of the year working and living in Beijing, China before going back to his investment banking roots by co-founding GP Bullhound. Hugh opened the Manchester office in 2013, is a Manchester Grammar School alum and graduated from Pembroke College, Oxford.
Learn more about Hugh Campbell on Crunchbase… Read more about GP Bullhound on Crunchbase…
Omiros D. Sarikas
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Brookstreet Equity Partners
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Omiros D. Sarikas is a managing partner at Brookstreet Equity Partners and a founding member. Omiros is the Chairman of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers’ Fundraising Advisory Board.
Learn more about Omiros D. Sarikas on Crunchbase…Brookstreet Equity Partners is a private equity/venture capital investment group supporting companies experiencing transformational growth. Read more about Brookstreet Equity Partners on Crunchbase…
Patrick Sheehan
Founder and Managing Partner @ ETF Partners
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Patrick is a founder and Partner of the Environmental Technologies Fund. Patrick has worked in venture capital since 1985. He was instrumental in founding 3i’s venture capital practice, and later became the founding Managing Director of its Silicon Valley operation. Before this, he was a research engineer for GEC and Marconi Space Systems. He was a member of the Executive Committee and Board of EVCA from 2007 to 2010, during which time he also chaired the Venture Capital Committee. Patrick has a Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering from UCL, London.
Learn more about Patrick Sheehan on Crunchbase…ETF Partners supports talented entrepreneurs and management teams with investment capital and experience. Read more about ETF Partners on Crunchbase…
Louis Elson
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Palamon Capital Partners
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Louis Elson is Managing Partner of Palamon Capital Partners, a private equity firm he co-founded in 1999. He has been active in European private equity for more than twenty five years, previously as a London-based partner of Warburg Pincus. Louis attended Phillips Academy Andover and Eton College, and he received a BA with Honors from Harvard University. He serves as a charter trustee of Phillips Academy Andover and was previously a Trustee of The Darden School at the University of Virginia and a member of the Harvard University Task Force on Academic Resources. In London, he is vice-chairman of Impetus-PEF; the UK’s leading venture philanthropy organization. He serves or has served on the Development Board of The Prince’s Trust, the International Development Council of the British Film Institute and is a trustee of The Voices Foundation and The Education Endowment Foundation. He was previously a member of the board of the British Venture Capital Association.
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Paul Coleman
Co-founder and Managing Partner @ H2O Venture Partners
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Prior to that he was a Principal Consultant at PA Consulting Group where he worked on commercial strategy within the healthcare sector. Previously he was the Business Development Manager at Oxitec, a company spun out of Oxford University focused on the control of pest insects of agricultural and public health importance. Paul studied at University College, Oxford and the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and held post-doctoral research fellowships at Edinburgh University and the International Livestock Research Institute, in Kenya. Throughout both his academic research and commercial career Paul has worked on major issues of public health, veterinary medicine and agriculture in developing countries across Africa, South America and Asia.
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Devina Paul
Co-Founder And Managing Partner @ Galvanise Capital
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Devina has spent her career to-date in the advertising, media and marketing world, initially cutting her teeth within some of the biggest marketing/communications networks in the world, including Interpublic, Dentsu Aegis and Omnicom. The last 10 years has seen her hold many senior finance positions, in particular working with start-ups to build sustainable growth and becoming sale-ready. She has overseen several sale processes. Most notably the sales of I Spy to Dentsu Aegis, Encore Digital Media to Next 15 and most recently Aquila Insight to Denstu Aegis. Through her wealth of experience she understands the importance of finance and operations in determining the success of any business. Devina is also an early-stage investor and sits on the boards of several Galvanise start-ups.
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Paras Patel
CoFounder and Managing Partner @ Energy Access Ventures
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Michael Rosen
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Future Positive Capital
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Paul Shea
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Beechbrook Capital
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Paul is co-founder and Managing Partner of Beechbrook Capital, where he is responsible for originating and executing private debt and equity co-investment opportunities. He sits on the Investment Committee for the Private Debt Funds and the UK SME Credit Fund. Beechbrook invests in the UK and Northern European lower mid-market by financing new buy out transactions or providing expansion or acquisition finance. Beechbrook have made over 45 investments to date and continue to benefit from a lack of debt finance from traditional providers to small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). Beechbrook has raised over €550m to date across four separate funds. Before starting up Beechbrook in 2008, Paul worked in the investment banking division of Schroders before joining MetLife to invest in European leverage loans, high yield bonds, mezzanine and private placements. He graduated from Oxford University in 1996 with an MA in Philosophy, Politics and Economics.
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Sinclair Dunlop
Founder and Managing Partner @ Masa Life Science Fund
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Mr. Dunlop has twenty years of experience successfully partnering new technologies with and delivering competitive returns to international investors. Prior to co-founding Rock Spring Ventures, Mr. Dunlop successfully raised MASA Life Science Ventures, LP (“MLSV” – www.mlsvfund.com). MLSV’s investors include several leading institutions and corporations in Japan and Korea, including a ‘top-ten’ Japanese Pharmaceutical company, the largest distributor of cardiac-health medical devices in Japan, a global financial institution and one of Japan’s leading publicly-traded Biotechnology companies. Mr. Dunlop’s international network of blue-chip co-investors, his experienced management team and a Scientific Advisory Board of renowned experts successfully built and managed a portfolio of leading life science companies. As Managing Partner of MLSV, he currently serves on the Board of Directors of Maxcyte Inc. and Apellis Pharmaceuticals Inc. He holds an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School, an M.A. (Honours) in Political Economy from Glasgow University, and a M.A. in International Relations from Syracuse University.
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Ali Beklen
Founder and Managing Partner @ HotelRunner
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After working for several financial institutions and IBM, Ali Beklen co-founded HotelRunner with Arden Agopyan, with the ambition of converting the long-tail accommodation sales and distribution management from offline to online at global scale. For the last 10 years, he has been advising many organizations and initiatives focusing on digital transformation of the travel industry globally. He has publications in international refereed journals and conferences about service and cloud computing. He is Advisory Chair for Software Service Computation at the International Academy, Research and Industry Association. Beklen holds an M.Sc. in Computer Engineering and a B.A. in Economics. He is also a PhD candidate in computer engineering.
Learn more about Ali Beklen on Crunchbase…SaaS enabled B2B network for accommodations and travel agencies to find, contract, connect, and transact with each other online. Read more about HotelRunner on Crunchbase…
Lee Durham
Co-founder and Managing Partner @ durhamlane
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Lee, co-founder of durhamlane, is a chartered marketer (MCIM) with over 20 years commercial sales and marketing experience, delivering progressive development solutions to ambitious organisations and their investors throughout the UK and worldwide. He has realised high growth programmes for businesses of all sizes from SME’s to Blue Chip clients, primarily in the technology, software and manufacturing sectors. One of his overriding business goals is ‘to raise the bar of the sales profession in Europe and make it a profession to be proud of, as it is in the US’, after all, we all sell in some shape or form.
Learn more about Lee Durham on Crunchbase…durhamlane is a sales performance specialist. Read more about durhamlane on Crunchbase…
Till Behnke
Founder and Managing Partner @ nebenan.de
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David Kelly
Co-founder and Managing Partner, CEO @ H2O Venture Partners
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David is a co-founder of H2O Venture Partners. Besides the management of H2O, he has led the development of Microbial Solutions and 360 Genomics. Prior to H2O, David was co-founder of Oxitec, a 2002 biotechnology spinout from Oxford University developing pesticide-free methods for the control of insects of agricultural and public health importance. His early academic career in public health included posts at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and Oxford University as well as substantial spells conducting field research in Africa and Latin America. He holds a PhD in tropical medicine from the LSH&TM at which institution is an honorary senior lecturer.
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Richard Lane
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ durhamlane
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Before becoming a recognised keynote speaker, sales trainer and sales improvement thought leader, Richard spent his career in sales management and leadership positions for learning and software technology companies. Throughout his career he has led both UK and global sales organisations to consistently out-perform expectations by selling, and helping others to sell, complex solutions. As the creator of the methodology “Selling at a Higher Level”, Richard has built up an enviable reputation by helping the likes of Sage, Xero, HP, British Gas, Aviva, NatWest (and durhamlane) become more profitable and transition towards developing performance cultures.
Learn more about Richard Lane on Crunchbase…durhamlane is a sales performance specialist. Read more about durhamlane on Crunchbase…
Arden Agopyan
Founder and Managing Partner @ HotelRunner
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Arden Agopyan is an experienced entrepreneur and business development executive with a proven track record. Prior to founding HotelRunner, he led IBM’s Cloud Computing Software technical sales and market creation activities across Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Middle East and Africa. His areas of expertise also include international team management, business execution, strategic marketing and financial management. As a talented hacker coming from software development background, along twenty years of business experience in technology, Arden is a Ph.D. candidate in Finance, holds a BSc in Computer Engineering degree and an MBA. Arden speaks five languages and is also Advisory Chair for Cloud Computing at International Academy, Research and Industry Association and co-author of a book, academic journals and articles.
Learn more about Arden Agopyan on Crunchbase…SaaS enabled B2B network for accommodations and travel agencies to find, contract, connect, and transact with each other online. Read more about HotelRunner on Crunchbase…
Paul McMahon
Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ SLM Partners
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