The Effective Angel Investor

“Brett is Co-Founder and Chairman of LOVESPACE – the UK’s first and largest 'storage by the box’ business. Prior to this, he co-founded Streetcar which grew to become the largest carsharing operator in Europe before it was sold to Zipcar in 2010. In addition to LOVESPACE, Brett also holds various non-exec and advisory positions in numerous early stage businesses in the UK including Osper, Chargifi, Men Rock, YunoJuno & Housekeep. ”

“Adam is an active angel investor with a portfolio spanning healthcare, education, collaboration tools, and technology for social change. He also founded the not-for-profit investment platform NorthInvest which drives co-investment in startups across the North of the UK. As an ex-lecturer at the University of Leeds and a communications specialist within the MoD, Adam is a consistent innovator and technologist with a strong cyber security background. In 1998, he created telecommunications platform company, aql which today hosts many tens of millions of phone numbers and providing messaging and communication services to leading banks, retail, logistics, healthcare and education. He’s created enabling services which are used by some of San Francisco’s biggest tech success stories.”

“Michael has been a successful, active, early-stage investor in the UK since 2000, having invested in over 20 businesses and realized 3 profitable exits to date. Co-investing with his brother, Michael was voted as the UKBAA’s Angel Investor of the Year. Michael’s earlier career included working at Sainsbury’s plc, specializing in Human Resources and IT. As well as working on the roll-out of “Sainsbury’s To You” internet shopping, Michael managed several projects including IT re-platforming of all Sainsbury’s HR and payroll systems. ”

“Peter Cowley, a Cambridge university technology graduate, founded and ran over 10 businesses in technology and property over the last 35+ years. He has built up a portfolio of 65 angel investments with 4 good exits and ten failures. He is the WBAF Best Angel Investor of the World and was UKBAA Angel of the Year 2014/15. He has mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs and is on the board of eight startups. In 2011, he founded and has since run Martlet: a Corporate Angel, investing (currently £6+M) from the balance sheet of Marshall, a £2.5bn revenue Cambridge engineering company. He is chair of the Cambridge Business Angels and is a fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Judge Management School in Cambridge. He is a non-executive director of the UK Business Angel Association and on the investment committee of the UK Angel Co-fund. He has also had 16 years’ experience as chair, treasurer and trustee of the boards of seven charities and is voluntary equity finance chair for the Federation of Small Businesses. He is sharing his and others’ experience and anecdotes in order to educate angels and entrepreneurs by publishing The Invested Investor.”

“Simon is an active angel investor in UK companies with a focus on the technology sector. His current portfolio consists of over twenty companies and to date has achieved five exits. In July 2016 he was awarded UKBAA Angel Investor of the Year 2016/2017. A qualified Chartered Accountant with 25 years of city experience, he has worked in equity research, sales and capital markets with major institutional investors and corporates across all sectors. He is a Non-Executive Director to a number of private companies including: Augmentra (Viewranger), a Cambridge based digital mapping software company, ExactTrak, a specialist mobile data security company, and Mantle Estates, a Stansted based commercial property company with business centres in Cambridge, Chelmsford, Duxford and Stansted. Simon has recently been appointed as Non-Executive Chairman of Transversal, a web self-service and knowledge management company. He is the CCG appointed observer on the board of Eagle Genomics and the board observer for Niume. ”

“Sarah is an entrepreneur, technologist and angel investor. She founded Angel Academe to encourage more women to become angel investors in early-stage tech startups. She’s also Director of digital strategy company Turner Hopkins and a “Dealmaker” for UKTI’s Global Entrepreneur Programme. She’s spent most of the last 20 years working in and around digital technology in the UK, Europe, US and Asia. Sarah works with startups and growth stage companies as advisor, supporter and connector; and with larger organisations and multinationals to develop their peripheral vision by identifying areas for innovation and the best partners and processes to help them deliver it.”