Keynote Speakers

Niklas Zennström founded technology venture capital firm Atomico in 2006, having realised that conventional venture capital firms were struggling to identify, value and develop high-technology companies effectively. Atomico has so far invested in more than 40 companies on three continents, and in March 2010 launched its second fund, the $165m institutional fund Atomico Ventures II. Niklas is best known for co-creating Skype, where he held the position of CEO from Skype’s inception until September 2007. Prior to Skype, Niklas co-founded and served as CEO of Kazaa, which became the world’s most downloaded internet software in 2003, and a number of other technology companies including Joltid in 2001.

Luke Johnson is the Chairman of Risk Capital Partners, a private equity firm he founded in 2001. He is Chairman/part owner of restaurant business Giraffe with 40 branches, and Chairman/owner of Patisserie Valerie, Druckers and Baker & Spice, three chains of over 70 retail patisseries. Previously, he was Chairman of PizzaExpress PLC and co-founded the largest UK chain of dental surgeries, Integrated Dental Holdings, which was sold in 2006 for over £100m after ten years of ownership. For six years until 2010, he served as Chairman of Channel 4 Television.

Mike Harris is co-founder and Executive Chairman of the UK's leading online identity company Garlik, which provides software and services to help protect people's personal information and identity online. Garlik now operates in the UK, USA, Germany and Italy and plans to launch in Turkey and India in 2011. Mike has created three iconic consumer businesses: at Egg plc, the UK's first online bank and for many years the biggest in the world; at Firstdirect, the world's first telephone banking operation; and at Mercury Communications, the UK's second largest telecommunications operator. He turned each of these into £1 billion plus concerns.

Panelists and Moderators

Panel: Busting down the Door: Taking on the Market Leader

Vinay Gupta is co-founder of WhipCar, a service that enables car owners to rent out their vehicles for money, whenever they are not using them. Previously he has been a digital media strategist and consultant working with brands such as Fleming Media, MySpace, Emap, Vue and the Abu Dhabi Media Zone. Vinay holds an MBA from London Business School and has held senior travel management positions at AT&T and American Express.

Jamie Murray Wells is the founder and Executive Chairman of Glasses Direct. Described by The Times in 2004 as having ‘lobbed a hand grenade into the cosy world of the high street optician’, it is now the largest online prescription glasses store in the world, selling a pair of glasses every few minutes, round the clock. Accolades for his work building Glasses Direct, include the CBI Growing Business, Shell Livewire, and Esquire Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards.

Mike Soutar is co-founder and CEO of ShortList Media Ltd, the market-leading premium, free magazine publisher. With an audited ABC in excess of 521,000 copies per week, ShortList dominates the men’s market, combining unparalleled reach with an affluent, ABC1 male readership. Sister title Stylist was launched in October 2009 to industry-wide acclaim; its weekly ABC is 424,000. Between both titles, they have won more than 30 major industry awards in the last three years. In April 2011 the company launched its first stand-alone digital brand, Emerald Street.

Judy Gibbons currently serves as non-executive director at Hammerson PLC, The Guardian Media Group, and Virgin Money Giving and was previously non-executive director at O2. Judy’s career includes ten years at Microsoft where she was Corporate Vice President of MSN Global Sales & Marketing and five years at Accel Partners, the technology venture investment firm. She has over 25 years of Experience in software, eCommerce, digital media and Internet technologies and has held senior positions at Apple Computer and Hewlett Packard, working in Silicon Valley. 

Moderator: Tim Brooks read English Literature at Cambridge and went into journalism, initially for Business Week magazine. At age 27 he successfully launched his own publishing business with two friends. His subsequent career has been in general management of B2B and consumer media businesses, working for publicly-quoted US and UK companies, and private equity, in London and Sydney. From 2006 until this year he was managing director of Guardian News & Media, during which time he also served as chairman of the Newspaper Publishers Association. Tim is currently Executive Fellow at London Business School.

Panel: Green is good: Green opportunities

Hugo Spowers is an Oxford University trained engineer and entrepreneur, Hugo has a passion for zero emissions vehicles. As an entrepreneur, he founded and ran a business over 15 years, designing and building racing cars and restoring historic racing cars. He left motorsport due to environmental concerns and went on to obtain an MBA from Cranfield University, where he conducted a feasibility study into bringing hydrogen fuel cell cars to market. This led him to found Riversimple, bring together the consortium behind LIFECar and then pursue the local vehicle as a path to commercialisation.

Dr Rob Wylie has focused on the clean technology investment area for over 20 years and is a Founder Partner of WHEB Partners. WHEB began as an award winning clean technology incubator and corporate finance group in 1995 before evolving into WHEB Partners, raising the UK’s first cleantech VC fund. WHEB now manages two specialist cleantech VC funds with total assets under management of £130m. A chemist with an MA and PhD from Cambridge University, Rob has been an active participant on numerous Industry, UK Government and University cleantech advisory boards including the Cleantech Network European Advisory Board, the DTI’s Environmental Innovation Advisory Group and the commercial advisory board for a consortium of the main London Universities (Imperial, King’s and UCL).

Toby Darbyshire is the founder and CEO of Engensa, one of the leading domestic and commercial solar companies in the UK. With an unparalleled record of customer service and delivery on roof-top projects, Engensa has raised millions of pounds of VC equity and consumer (“Free Solar”) finance in the last 12 months as well as introducing a range of new products to the UK market from SolarEdge micro-inverters through to real-time remote monitoring as standard. Prior to Engensa, Toby had 5 years at Bain & Company working with UK utilities, global energy and private equity players. In addition to Bain, Toby has worked with Cleantech Venture Capital funds in New York and advised the (former) Shadow Energy team on domestic policy. Toby holds an MA from Cambridge University.

Giselle Weybrecht is the author of ‘The Sustainable MBA: The Manager’s Guide to Green Business’ published by Wiley in 2010 (www.thesustainablemba.com). The book aims to educate the next generation of business leaders about sustainability issues, whether these be students or business executives. Prior to this she worked for many years with the United Nations internationally in sustainable development. Today she works with government, universities, NGOs, business and with social entrepreneurs in sustainability around the world. She is a dynamic and sought after speaker in sustainability issues and also writes on sustainability and business issues for a variety of publications including the Economist and Forbes.

Moderator: Hugh Parnell, for the last 10 years, has worked in the funding and business development arena. He grew a team within NW Brown, which is now spun out to IQ Capital, which includes managing a business angels network (Great Eastern Investment Forum) and £40m of discretionary investment capital. He is now principally an independent consultant, working with the legacy of that time with NW Brown Group, with IQ Capital, and helping a range of other tech growth companies develop to maturity, via ExDRA, Cambridge Network and other organisations including the team delivering "Understanding Finance for Business" for the eastern Region. He is very involved with supporting the environmental technology sector, inter alia as Chairman of Envirotech Ltd and co-founder of the Cambridge Energy Forum and of the Cleantech SIG at Cambridge Network. 

 Panel: Building a Silicon Valley in Shoreditch: fostering entrepreneurship in the UK

Alex Van Somerenis a General Partner in the Seed Fund at Amadeus Capital in Cambridge, UK. Alex has worked in the technology industry since the 1980s. He co-founded ANT Ltd in 1990 to produce networking products. In 1996 he co-founded nCipher to develop internet security products using advanced cryptography. The company became a world leader in IT security. As CEO at nCipher he raised a total of £14m ($25m) in venture capital funding before he led the company to an IPO on the London Stock Exchange in 2000 (LSE:NCH) at a £350m valuation. nCipher plc was sold to Thales SA in 2008. He was appointed an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Judge Business School, University of Cambridge in 2005.

Elizabeth Varley is a communicator, connector and entrepreneur with a background in technology, content and events. She is Co-founder and CEO of TechHub - the space bringing together the global technology startup community, with its first launch in London's Old Street. Amongst TechHub's other projects, Elizabeth is currently working with the UK Prime Minister's Tech Team, the Mayor's Office, UKTI and the Technology Strategy Board to support tech startups in the UK via the Tech City project. Elizabeth has previously worked with small business advice site Smarta, with Germination on the SHINE unconference for social entrepreneurs, and headed the team for Twestival London in 2009-2010.