We have an exciting end to series 4 of the Invested Investor podcasts. This week we are proud to have our founders Peter and Alan Cowley talking about their experience running the Invested Investor. A unique and open conversation between father and son reveals what their key motives are for setting up the Invested Investor, as well as the key successes and failures of the business. Interestingly, they highlight the biggest learnings from all the podcasts they have recorded. 

Reece Chowdhry, the dynamic founder of RLC Ventures joins us this week. Reece has been investing since the age of 13 and now has over 40 investments to his name. In this podcast, we hear how Reece started life at EY, before setting up RLC Ventures in 2015.  At 30, Reece is a relatively young yet very well established investor. Don’t let his age fool you, he is extremely experienced but still willing to learn. His approach to investing includes looking for companies with a presence in emerging markets and offsetting a percentage of any carry from RLC Ventures to charities that the founders support. 

Zoe Peden, investor and award-winning educational technology entrepreneur joins us to talk about her journey. Founder of FutureWorldVC and MyChoicePad, a language development product has made a lasting impact on the lives of people with learning disabilities.  Zoe began her career in the charity sector, she describes life as an entrepreneur seeking funding, balancing the ups and downs and living off pure determination and creative talent. 

Joel Solomon joins us this week, he is the founding partner of Renewal Funds, the Canadian based mission venture capital firm and author of “The Clean Money Revolution”. Joel explains why he decided to become an investor and strategist for social and cultural change, as well as how his principles were cemented during his early career. He takes us back to his first job in politics through to his current position. Joel explains why and how he supports businesses so they can be part of the solution, making the new sectors of environmental technology and climate change matter.  This is a compelling podcast, it’s sound quality is not up to our usual standard, due to the method of recording.

Simon Bond is the innovation director for Set-Squared, a partnership of universities that support early stage technology companies helping them to raise investment. He is an experienced Director of business incubation, university enterprise & research commercialisation, he specialises in business development strategies for innovation-intensive companies.  Simon discusses his background and explains how he always believed he was destined for the business world, after founding a TV station with angel money in the early 1990’s.  We learn about his journey as Simon talks us through the thrill of founding, scaling and successfully exiting, and how those early lessons never left him.

Kath Austin founder and CEO of Bee Bee Wraps and SME Entrepreneur of the year joins us for this week’s podcast. Kath explains why she left her charity fundraising background for her heartfelt curiosity of conquering the waste that her growing household was creating. Kath solved part of her home waste problem by creating her waxed cotton, food wrap product, she explains her determination to bring Bee Bee Wraps to market and why the company has a wide appeal, not only focusing on sustainability and impact but also maintaining an aesthetic that fits alongside current retail trends.  Kath explains her journey with the Judge Business School’s incubator, Cambridge Social Ventures, and subsequently how the support programme enabled the sharp growth curve of the company and the business changes required to scale.

Firdaus Nagree, angel investor, founder and CEO of FCI London’s largest design showroom for high-end furniture and interiors with offices in India, UAE and Nigeria, joins us this week. Firdaus shares his journey from a family business to celebrated multi-award winner.  Firdaus openly discusses how he learnt from mistakes made in his early career and how his change in attitude towards business relationships enabled him to shape his decision making processes today. He goes deeper to explain how a eureka moment has since formed his current inclusive managerial style and has enabled him to better mentor start-ups within his role at Entrepreneurs' Organization, the international entrepreneurial network.

Chris Smith, Managing Partner at Playfair Capital, angel investor and previous Head of Product Development at plan.com, where under his watch the company ranked #1 in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100. Chris is passionate about investing and supporting tech companies where he is able to use  his extensive operational and legal experience to best advantage. Chris takes us through his career from London Lawyer to investment manager and entrepreneur. Chris offers some particularly insightful advice including his take on the protection of unique methodology or trade secrets.

Ronan Perceval CEO and founder of Phorest, a global software provider focusing on the salon space. Ronan tells us how entrepreneurship had always been part of his mindset but how his university software ventures  allowed him to define his business beliefs,  in particular fundraising vs bootstrapping and founding for the longterm. Phorest has recently been named the most successful business financed by early stage investors by European Business Angels Network

Craig Dearden-Philips MBE, social entrepreneur, angel investor, writer and academic joins us this week. Craig tells his inspirational journey from his first voluntary work to his present day social investment portfolio and social leadership publications.  His first venture Speaking Up, was a  system designed to support people with mental health and learning difficulties deemed by Craig necessary as the ones in place, both public sector and charity, where not achieving what they where designed to do. Craig recalls how he always wanted to “build and create things that benefited society”, and how his motivation to help others pushed him into his entrepreneurial endeavors. 

Professor Chris Mairs CBE, angel investor, entrepreneur, Venture Partner at Entrepreneur First, patron of Fight For Sight and a fellow of The Royal Academy of Engineering, tells his story this week. Chris co-founded telecommunications software company Metaswitch Networks where he was CTO for many years having completed a computer science degree at Cambridge and spending some time at IBM, where his seven-strong co-founding team met. Chris tells us the engaging story of how Metaswitch began, why they hired raw graduates over experienced applicants, and why the importance of a high-quality management team is crucial.  Chris goes on to discuss his transition from entrepreneur to investor in UK based early-stage technology companies and accelerators. Alongside this, he entertains with his many celebrated international sporting achievements, most recent being his incredible cycle across the USA, fundraising for research into the prevention of sight loss.

Christopher Mirabile the Boston based Chair of the Angel Capital Association, co-founder of Seraf and Managing Director of Launchpad Venture Group joins us this week with an incredible story. Christopher takes us from his early days in law and explains how he arrived in the venture, start-up and entrepreneurial space. His vast knowledge makes for an entertaining listen as he discusses what excites him and what pains him about angel investing. Christopher gives us his take on a classic start-up by saying  “A classic start-up consists of a team that’s never done it before, creating technology that’s never existed before, to serve a market that doesn’t exist yet, what could possibly go wrong?”

Keiron Sparrowhawk MedTech expert, founder and CEO of MyCognition joins us this week. He explains his personal connection to his early work within pharmaceuticals with Wellcome and GSK.  He tells us how his disruptive thinking lead him into entrepreneurship and how his first venture PriceSpective resulted in a fantastic exit, which enabled him to concentrate on himself and subsequently create MyCognition. Keiron explains how his vision for the cognitive fitness game and app described as “physiotherapy for the brain” is set to disrupt the pharmaceutical market, and how the inspiration came from his desire to improve the quality of life of people suffering, often silently with diminished cognitive function. His passion shines through when he describes how this development could shape the way in which society as a whole considers and deals with mental health and cognitive fitness.

Alex Sleigh investment director at the leading financial service provider, Newable Private Investing is our guest this week. Alex talks to us about his early career, how his father’s influence helped him to set his sights on venture capital and how his economics based background helped shape his future entrepreneurial vision.  Alex shares his journey from investment director at London Business Angels to his idea for improving people's lives with enhanced broadband connectivity in rural locations and founding Newable Private Investing, the UK’s leading early-stage investment and business angel network.

Emma Sinclair MBE joins us this week, sharing her audacious approach to life and how life lessons helped her to navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship, from car parks and health clubs to tech.  She explains how her childhood connection with the stock exchange taught her how to be bold and exit driven. Emma founded Enterprise Alumni a platform which enables enterprises to stay in touch with their talent pool and engage former employees. She is the youngest person to take a company public in the world.  Emma states how there is no one-size-fits-all for an entrepreneurial team or formula for winning in life but that it is easier if you have people around you who support you, expressing the importance of trust within her founding team.  Emma goes on to discuss how her sentiments towards work have changed over time and have naturally gravitated towards building communities for the benefits of competition, support and guidance. Emma’s involvement with Unicef as their first business mentor is her largest commitment outside of Enterprise Alumni. Her project teaches entrepreneurship skills in hard to reach places and resonates with her strong belief that “it is important to start things and not be afraid to think big in order to solve problems”.

Martin Frost, CEO and co-founder of CMR Surgical, joins us this week. Martin is passionate about supporting technology based start-ups that make a difference in people’s lives, and has great experience raising venture and company development. In this podcast, he talks about his early corporate life licensing breakthrough tech and how this led him into entrepreneurship. He co-founded Red Cloud, a mobile money platform, which has transformed the lives of millions of people in emerging markets. Martin continues to transform lives with CMR’s robotic surgical solutions based in Cambridge. He has his sights set firmly on the global market with the new robotic platform, Versius. Martin’s honest insights into the needs of an entrepreneur are not only engaging, but are straightforward and hugely valuable too. 

Raymond Luk, the Canadian serial entrepreneur and seasoned investor is our highly experienced and personable guest this week. Raymond takes us on his journey from his early days as founder of Hard Boiled Egg, a software development company, and Opendesk, a software service company, to his angel investing. Raymond explains how his entrepreneurial ventures have shaped his angel investing and how lessons learnt have helped him to understand the needs of start-ups and entrepreneurs. Raymond founded the Montreal based One Year Labs, an early-stage seed accelerator, and has since founded Flow Ventures and Hockeystick, which provides companies with software that enables growth using data.

Iris Barcia is an innovative technologist and experienced telecommunications professional, we are delighted to welcome her this week. Iris explains how technological curiosity and innovation drove her career, and set her on the road to becoming a leading telecommunications professional. Iris entertains us with her start-up journey and her creative role at Keima. 

In part two of Hermann Hauser’s podcast he brings us up to date by discussing his role within Amadeus Capital. Giving us an understanding of his investment portfolio, explaining why he champions AI, machine learning, quantum computing and Blockchain, and what qualities he looks for in an ideal entrepreneur. Hermann offers us his top tips for entrepreneurs and an insight into how lessons can be learnt from his failures.

Hermann Hauser of the legendary Acorn computers is our distinguished guest this week. In part one of Hermann’s podcast, he talks to us about his long and successful history as an entrepreneur. He prompts memories and amuses with his truly amazing journey. Hermann entertains us with the story of how he secured a bank overdraft to finance Acorn computers and how the team managed to put together the BBC Micro in just a few days. He explains how the Micro revolutionised IT teaching in schools, how school children learnt to program using Basic at school and home. He goes on to discuss his role at Olivetti, ARM and the Active Book Company. 

Emily Mackay, head of AI and data strategy at Congenica, Eco-entrepreneur and innovator in machine learning and data technologies, joins us this week.  Emily tells us how her desire for order and efficiency led her to the world of data and how researching renewable energy sources led her to found Microgenius, a digital, community funding platform. Emily discusses her steep learning curve as the founder of Microgenius and Crowdsurfer. Continuing on to a difficult end to her working at TAB and then her prosperous new role at Congenica.

Simon Calver, chair of the UK Business Angels Association, founding partner and Head of Investments at BGF Ventures and Chair at NED Moo joins the Invested Investor podcast this week.  Simon expresses his story from his early days with large multinationals, his strategy for LoveFilm, the acquisition by Amazon and his time transforming MotherCare. Simon brings us up to-date in his engaging journey by sharing his insights into angel investing and his portfolio of companies.

We are delighted to welcome Lord Bilimoria of Chelsea CBE DL to our podcast this week. Karan entertains us with his journey from a young entrepreneur of school age importing hockey sticks into the Uk from Calcutta, he gives us his insight into who influenced him to think like an entrepreneur and how that led him to found the Cobra empire. Karan goes on to explain why and how he has ended up bringing real world experience into parliament, he shares with us his tips on dealing with start-up growing pains and the biggest challenges he faced growing the Cobra brand.

Telecommunications expert Rosalind Singleton joins the Invested Investor podcast this week. In her podcast she divulges that her accreditation was gained through experience and tenacity, which has compelled her to openly communicate her own expertise with others. Ros is the Chair of the UK5G Innovation Network Advisory Board, the Managing Director of UK Broadband and works closely with the department for Digital, Cultural, Media and Sport. She is also an active mentor and angel investor, concentrating on female led tech companies with Angel Academe.

David Cleevely continues his vibrant story in part two of his Invested Investor podcast.  David begins by discussing his reasons for setting up Cambridge Angels in 2001 and why his main focus now lies with his impressive investment portfolio. David co-founded Cambridge Wireless in 2001 and 3Way Networks acquired by Airvana in 2007, in the same year he co-founded and became Chairman of CRFS. David has a wealth of experience and insight to share including his links with the Centre for Science and Policy, the Cambridge Science Centre and the Raspberry Pi foundation before entertaining us with his take on the restaurant business and his successes, Bocca di Lupo and Gelupo. David has recently been recognised as “Icon of the Year” a Barclays award which celebrates the positive ways that entrepreneurs can change an industry, the economy and society. Picture from Road.cc

David Cleevely, Chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and co-founder of Cambridge Angels joins the Invested Investor podcast this week with an impressive story. David shares his early career highlights with us in part one of his fascinating journey. In the mid 70’s, David tells us he “cut his teeth” within PostOffice Telecommunications and how this experience taught him to think ahead, which influenced his subject choice for his phD at Cambridge during the 80’s. He also shares with us his time at the Economist newspaper group within the intelligence unit. David recalls how he went on to found Analysys which became the “go to” telecommunications consultancy of the time and his work with the European Commission. David talks about co-founding Cambridge Network, Cambridge Wireless and the biotech company Abcam, before finishing by touching on his consultancy for communications within the Department of Defence.

Suse Reynolds is welcomed to the Invested Investor for this week’s podcast. Suse shares with us her childhood dream of wanting to change the world and what lead her from a career in diplomacy to immerse herself in New Zealand’s angel investing space with the sole aim of creating world changing businesses.  Suse founded and is the Executive Director of the Angel Association of New Zealand (AANZ), sits on the board of Creative HQ, co-founded Angel HQ and is a member of VicLinks momentum Investment Committee.

Toby Norman is our notably inspirational guest this week. Toby is a social entrepreneur, passionate about empowering the global health community with high impact, cutting edge biometric technology in order to overcome the difficult lack of identification challenge faced by many developing countries. Toby is the co-founder and CEO of Simprints, the Cambridge based, non-profit technology company responsible for developing fingerprint recognition biometrics that are 98-100% accurate. Simprints is currently reaching 2.1 million mothers and children across 10 countries, the next challenge facing the company is to provide concrete evidence that the Simprint biometric is a frontline tool that positively impacts people lives.

Dr Ronjon Nag entertains us further this week with part two of his compelling podcast. Ronjon discusses his transition into angel investing and his preference for Cambridge and Silicon Valley based companies, his conversation highlights his good nature, creative thinking and openness to new ideas. He offers us his tips for angels, non-more important than ‘never follow, use your own mind’, and how he is a firm believer in serendipity. Ronjon has since become a fellow at Stanford University Distinguished Careers Institute, he enthusiastically promotes the benefits of returning to university later in life.

Dr Ronjon Nag inventor and serial entrepreneur is our prominent guest this week. In part one, Ronjon shares the fascinating start-up journey for his first three mobile technology companies selling out to Motorola and Blackberry. A pioneer of speech recognition and neural networks in the mid 1980’s, to the development of handwriting recognition AI and predictive text, Ronjon’s first company Lexicus was acquired by Motorola in the early 1990’s. His second company Cellmania concentrated on further mobile developments including a mobile search engine and the first App store in 1999, he sold to Blackberry in 2010. A truly gripping listen with more to come next week, in part two.

Dr Elin Haf Davies is both tenacious and personable. In this week’s podcast she shares her professional journey and her love of extreme physical adventures. Elin’s career began as a paediatric nurse at Great Ormond Street hospital. After 20 years of clinical, research experience and gaining her PhD she founded Aparito.  The company provides a solution to the ever changing challenges of bringing innovative drugs to market by offering a patient-centric design of wearable long term monitoring devices. Aparito’s data collection is key to monitoring patients, allowing to feed into care plans and treatment pathways. Whilst their wearable devices enable the delivery of an effective and personalised treatment.

Jon Bradford has been described as the ‘godfather of European accelerators’ for good reason. Jon is one of Europe’s most experienced early stage investors with many accomplishments under his belt, including recently being honoured at The Europas Awards. This week on the invested investor we gain an insightful look at Jon’s journey from founding the Difference Engine through to his more recent achievements. As co-founder of F6S, Jon has established the social network as one of the worlds largest platforms for entrepreneurs, as well as co-founding Tech.eu which has risen to become Europe’s premier tech news site.

Katy Tuncer, serial founder and leadership coach is this week's guest on the Investor Invested podcast we are delighted to welcome her back. As the founder of Horizon37, Katy explains her philosophy and approach to leadership coaching and talks us through her vision. Horizon37 offers leadership coaching, board facilitation, strategic consultancy, bespoke workshops and courses for high impact, senior leaders, entrepreneurs, angels, founders, and Invested Investors. Katy is a recognised inspiration, having gained the Prime Ministers’ Point of Light award in 2016 and, in 2014 being listed in the BBC top 100 women list.

Tomi Davies is our welcome guest this week. Tomi discusses his awareness of a strong social responsibility and how he feels this is knitted together with his commercial and technological talents. The President of the African Business Angel Network (ABAN) and co-founder of the Lagos Angel Network (LAN), he sits on the board at MBO Capital and TextNigeria. Tomi has outstanding experience building large-scale, technology enabled systems projects in the US, Europe and Africa, which was gained from a variety of executive leadership roles with influential global brands including Ernst & Young, Marks & Spencer, Elf Aquitaine, Sapient and the One Laptop Per Child project. Tomi’s personal goal is to help "drive the development of Africa through entrepreneurship that is creating social and economic value using technology”.

Max Bautin connects with the  Invested Investor podcast this week. Co-founder and partner in IQ Capital, a Cambridge based deep tech, seed and early stage VC fund, focusing on a portfolio of start-ups, within the UK. Max offers us an insightful glimpse into his world, a compelling listen. Max is a seasoned member of the Cambridge Angels syndicate, a council member of Invest Europe, the governing body for the association of European VC’s and a board member of Thought Machine, to name just a few of his undertakings.

Inger Anson shares her commercial perspective on legal counsel in business and early-stage investing in this weeks’ acutely insightful and useful podcast. Inger is a partner and the gregarious, head of the Cambridge office of Harrison Clark Rickerbys Ltd which is well located to meet the needs of the Cambridge scientific and biotech ecosystem. Along with the highest levels of integrity, Inger offers a level of transparency and trust that simplifies and eases the legal process, and enables clients to gain confidence in her.

In this edition of the Invested Investor podcast, we immerse ourselves in the world of IP.  We talk with the acutely, insightful Zeev Fisher, founder of Pekama, a Cambridge based IP company. Zeev saw the need for innovation and has since, initiated change within the IP space, for both IP owners and attorneys. Bringing the international IP community together, sharing work and offering both simplicity and clarity to IP management, Zeev shares valuable advise and offers his top tips for entrepreneurs and invested investors.

In this weeks Invested Investor, podcast, we are pleased to introduce, former scientist, Luke Hakes. An accomplished deep technologies investor with numerous successes under his belt, including Magic Pony and Eve Sleep, to name just a couple. Luke is happy to talk to us about some of the failures he has experienced too, and gives us his practical advise on people, timing and gaining the right investors.  Luke is a talented, Invested investor and partner in Octopus Ventures, Chairman of the University of Manchester’s commercialisation company, UMI3, Director of The University of Manchester Global Leadership Board and an angel investor specialising in the AI and Genetics space.

This week on the Invested Investor podcast we are pleased to bring you the enthusiastic and determined, iconoclast, Gemma Milne. A creative, innovation strategist and freelance tech and science writer. Gemma gives us an insight into her deep passion for all things tech and how she has been driven by the desire to support new innovation and science start-ups. She co-founded Science:Disrupt, a platform which offers investment pitching advise to science start-ups and helps invested investors track down new talent. Gemma also sits as an expert advisor on the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 panel, which judges applications for funding from science and deep technological start-ups and gives us her measured perspective on the effects of Brexit.

This week at the Invested Investor podcast, we are pleased to be joined by the personable, Ofri Ben-Porat.  Co founder and CEO of the highly successful and innovative, London based, SaaS data analytical and personalised marketing company, Pixoneye. He shares his varied journey from college campus to his current success and lets us in on his top three, valuable tips; think big and raise big, hold onto your tech, keep it in-house and share the burden with a valued co founder. We hope you enjoy listening to Ofri as much as we have.

In part two we continue William Tunstall-Pedoe’s journey. William discusses his exit from Amazon, his involvement with Toronto based incubator, Creative Destructive Lab and what drove him to be a successful invested investor with over 50 investments with Cambridge Angels and Octopus Investments. He offers us an insight into his passion for big impact, deep tech, in particular, an AI physician app, where he acts as an invested investor and adviser. In this episode we also bring you an Amazon Alexa demonstration carried out by William, we hope you find it as highly entertaining as we do.

In part one we are fascinated to learn how the hugely successful, artificial intelligence entrepreneur, William Tunstall-Pedoe developed anagram-generating AI to solve cryptic crosswords and how he was inspired to become the sole founder of the Cambridge based, start-up Evi in 2005. As the architect, William tells us how he steered a course from family investment through multiple venture capital rounds to the final pivot and the origins of an own brand, consumer product with Alexa and Echo. Acquired in 2012 by the multinational, technology giant Amazon as a major competitor for Apple’s Siri, William explains how the move from independent to Amazon executive fitted him and the product well.

In this edition we cant offer you the full turkey dinner with all the trimmings but we can bring you some seasonal cheer with our 2018 year end special edition. This podcast brings together a collection of serial entrepreneurs and seasoned invested investors, it focuses on some of our highlights from 2018 including an entertaining story from Priya Lakhani of Masala Masala and more recently Century Tech, Neil Garner from Proxama and Thyngs and Shirin Dehghan from Ariesco. William Makant and Yusuf Muhammad who created Plumis, talk about their first premesis on a ship and the serial investor Richard Lucas recalls an exraordinary story involving thirty thousand pounds cash, a briefcase and a gun! Ramona Liberoff warns not to run out of funds especially if you are too early to market and Jonathon Millar founder of Abcan PLC celebrates its twentieth year, congratulations from us. If thats not enough, you can hear valuable, words of wisdom from Andy Philips of Booking.com fame.

Dr Victor Christou follows on from part one of his podcast to us about his story beyond Opsys and discusses his philosophy behind investments made today. Victor spent time at Oxford Capital Partners and later at Wellington Partners before embarking on his future at Cambridge Innovation Capital. CIC is Cambridge University’s preferred investor for it’s spin-out businesses and also the wider Cambridge technology and healthcare cluster. He gives us his insight into which investments he tends to avoid and which he is best at supporting. He manages a fine balance between his entrepreneur and the investment, by engaging in a necessary mix of support and scepticism.

Victor Christou is the CEO of Cambridge Innovation Capital, he relates his story from career academic to entrepreneur and why his future switched from one to the other. His career began at Oxford when creating innovative materials in the laboratory, this led him to recognise the business potential of developing technologies. In this podcast Victor talks us through his venture, from the creation of Opsys in 1997, a pioneer in mobile OLED display technology, up to his exit, 5 years on. He explains the acquisition of IP was paramount because of the erratic nature of the companies progress and how important it was to remain agile and opportunistic in his approach. The interlectual property became the value driver within the business and was realised at his exit, unlike the investment made in production. He explains how the experience taught him life lessons, none more important than to adopt an holistic perspective in order to improve interpersonal dynamics, embrace an opportunistic and agile tactic and to preserve the vision of the founders. Today, victor looks for transparency in his investments, recognising the need for a relationship based on honesty. To read the podcast transcription please CLICK HERE - Powered by Speechmatics Victor has considerable experience on both sides of the investment table. In recent years he has focused his attention on technology investing. Immediately prior to CIC, Victor was at pan-European venture capital investors Wellington Partners, where he was a Venture Partner in the Tech Team. Before that Victor founded Opsys, an organic electronics business focusing on OLEDs and was a member of the team that sold Opsys to Cambridge Display Technology (now owned by Sumitomo Chemicals). Victor has a BSc and PhD in Chemistry from Imperial College, London and was a Sloan Fellow in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. In the early stages of his career, Victor was an academic at the University of California at Berkeley and then at the University of Oxford, where he was a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College. Victor was the Royal Society of Chemistry Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002.

Pilgrim Beart shares his journey from Silicon Valley to his Cambridge homeland and gives us his insight into the similarities between the two. He discusses how start-ups can adopt the valley’s culture in order to be diverse, both in forming partnerships and buying into other peoples expertise. This is to ride the scaling wave and not get left behind.  He discusses his journey from R&D engineer, his experiences climbing the ladder and how he gained his bigger picture with AlertMe, which was white-labelled at HIVE by British Gas. He focuses on how the company was nearly crushed by the transition from R&D to service provider, and when scaling the company he was lucky to quickly understand how operations and the process was everything. Pilgrim Beart worked at a startup even before University and never looked back. After University he worked at other startups in Oxford and Silicon Valley then returned to Cambridge in 1998 to begin his entrepreneurial career with his first company activeRF. Out of that spun Antenova which shipped billions of antenna systems and then he joined a couple of grads to form Splashpower, a pioneer in wireless charging. In 2006 he teamed-up with Adrian Critchlow (Active Hotels) to form AlertMe which created the platform now known as Hive, shipped millions of connected devices and was sold for $100m to British Gas in 2015. Most-recently Pilgrim co-founded DevicePilot, which helps IoT companies to manage their devices.

Belinda Bell sets out her mission to protect Social Enterprise from being hijacked by corporations as a marketing tool and clearly defines what a Social Enterprise is. In this podcast we find out about her life and the journey that brought her to The Judge Business School in Cambridge. Belinda is a social entrepreneur having set up multiple businesses with a social vision and has been supporting entrepreneurs who share her purpose. Belinda is a social entrepreneur with experience in establishing, supporting and growing organisations that bridge the public, private and third sectors; alongside extensive experience in consultancy and within academia. She is currently Director of Cambridge Social Ventures, part of the Cambridge Centre for Social Innovation. She has set up a number of social ventures herself and has considerable experience working to support entrepreneurs that are scaling their social ventures. Her work is informed by a rigorous evidence-based underpinning and she continues to contribute to academic research and teaching at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Carlos Diniz is a fantastic example of an entrepreneur learning from their ups and downs. This podcast tells the story of O Meu Dentista, which was the largest dentist franchise in Portugal. The company grew fast, with upwards of €11 million in sales at its peak, however a number of deciding factors led to its closure. Carlos has learnt a incredibly large amount about hiring the right people, Invested Investors and growing pains of a successful start-up. This story is a hugely useful tool for any entrepreneur looking to grow their business, and Carlos is an inspirational figure that now helps businesses learn from his O Meu Dentista journey.  After graduation Carlos began working life in the Marketing Department of a major Portuguese bank. He quickly found his calling in the dental industry, due to one of his best friend’s sister being a dentist. Founding O Meu Dentista in 2008, Carlos rapidly grew the company. He has made his first €million in sales by the age of 25, raised his first million in funding by 28.  His company quickly grew to 22 clinics, 300 employees and €11 million in sales. Today he is a healthcare board adviser for a number of leading companies in Portugal, using his business experience to help start-ups learn from his successes and failures. Additional to all this, he is developing a highly sophisticated Clinical Software CRM.

Tamara Giltsoff never expected to end up in a Government role. She was always interested in new technologies and how they could create innovative business models. This led her to Product Health a connected hardware start-up, which also introduced her to commercial Africa. When it was time to move on, Tamara found her calling as Head of Innovation at the Department for International Development. In this podcast, Tamara gives us insight on how her entrepreneurial spirit could be applied to the world of government, as well as the economic development of Africa. She also investigates how venture capitalism can help shape future government investing practice.

Dominic Hill was on a six-figure salary and the director of a multi-million pound jewellery wholesaler. However, he left this coveted position because his learning had slowed and saw that the future of the industry was digital. Dominic joined an ambitious start-up but soon realised it wasn't a good fit, so started his own business, Atelier Technology. It was a very hard beginning, with angry investors and a shoestring budget, but he has persevered and the business is now the talking point of an old-fashioned industry. In this podcast, Dominic talks about his decision to leave a comfortable job, and the risk of the unknown. His drive stems from his desire to see the jewellery industry digitise and his many well selected mentors and advisers.

It is fantastic to be able to say that this week’s podcast comes from our launch event. Filled with interesting anecdotes from a number of leading entrepreneurs and investors from across the country. We hear how Jeanette Walker set up a blind company, based on the hope for 8 months of Mediterranean weather in the UK a year, Modwenna Rees-Mogg’s intriguing story about almost going into business with an ill-advised co-founder, Tony Quested explaining how he helped blow the whistle on a biotechnology entrepreneur who had a ‘magical’ vaccine, and many more.  In between war stories from the start-up world, we interviewed those who have been integral to the release of our first book. One of the most important being Kate Kirk, our inspired wordsmith and ghostwriter, who explains what drew her to the project.

Nathan Hill has been on the board of UK Business Angels Association and is an serial entrepreneur. He started his career at Oxford becoming a physicist, which incidentally he was “rubbish at”. However, this set back did identify his gift as salesman. The start of Nathan’s entrepreneurial career saw him launch Qi3. It was heavily involved in everything space, but he saw that smaller businesses were unable to afford his services. Nathan offered it to them for equity and so launched his Angel career. Over the following years, Nathan has made 15 investments with 25x and 37x exits as well as some failures. In this podcast, he talks about the lessons learnt in his exciting career including launch Honest Grapes, an online ‘farmers’ market for quality wine.

Jelena Aleksic came to Cambridge to do a PhD in genetics but soon realised she had an entrepreneurial spirit. She started two businesses on the side during her study, but it wasn’t until she obtained funding for Gene Adviser did she work full time on a startup. Jelena was successfully funded 350K from investors, including Peter Cowley. Unfortunately, the business failed, but Jelena learnt some vital lessons which she shares in this podcast. Geneticist turned entrepreneur. Jelena is passionate about the potential of biotechnology to improve patients' lives.  She is the former CEO and co-founder of GeneAdviser, an online ordering platform for genomic medicine now owned by the NHS. As a postdoc at the University of Cambridge, Jelena studied the epigenetics of a rare genetic disorder, Dubowitz syndrome. Patients told her of the struggle they faced to find a diagnosis – on average six year, with visits to eight doctors. She built the GeneAdviser platform to make it faster and easier for doctors to order cutting-edge genetic tests.  Furthermore, Jelena is a director of the charity TReND in Africa, working to improve scientific capacity in Africa. She find it exciting to promote different causes and help organisations grow.

Nigel Walker is Head of Innovation Lending at Innovate UK, and is constantly helping new and creative ideas flourish. Nigel is responsible for Access to Finance, where he continuously comes across cutting edge businesses in a variety of sectors. Because of this, he has played a role in many businesses that have been featured on Invested Investor, and guided them and many more to success. In this podcast Nigel talks about how he helps businesses of all scales, how to obtain funding, and the four sectors the Government is keen to invest in.  Nigel is part of the team delivering Innovate UK’s £50m innovation loans pilot programme. He is a director and member of the credit committee of Innovate UK Loans Ltd.  Prior to this role, he headed the organisation’s support for innovative SMEs in gaining access to private sector capital to accelerate the journey from concept to commercialisation.  Nigel has a background in the financial services industry, having spent over 10 years at each of Deutsche Bank and GE Capital.  At GE, he established the European ‘Access GE’ programme, advising, coaching and mentoring management teams of businesses owned by private equity firms on operational excellence, acquisition integration, strategy development and leadership.

Andrew Gaule has a reputation for innovating within corporates. In this podcast we hear how it started during the dotcom boom when he was studying at Henley Business School and saw the potential for selling online. He wrote an MBA paper on the topic, which rewarded him with his worst mark. Andrew wasn’t shaken however and using his entrepreneurial spirit started Henley Incubator in 2000, and the rest is history. Since then Andrew has gone onto help corporates by introducing them to open innovation and its benefits, as well as being heavily involved in venture capital.

Shirin Dehghan is a hugely successful entrepreneur, having built Arieso and sold it to JDSU. In part 2 of her podcast, we hear how she decided to take a year out before getting bored and subsequently gravitating back to the start-up ecosystem. She has made a number of angel investments, including a lesson in letting her guard down as she invested in a team she knew well. Shirin is now a senior partner at Frog Capital, where she sits on four start-up boards. A tip to entrepreneurs, “Don’t turn up to a board meeting with a laundry list of problems without thinking of possible solutions. Your board will lose faith quickly”. Shirin founded, expanded and subsequently sold mobile communications business Arieso. A University of Southampton Engineering alumna, she has over 20 years’ experience in the software and mobile communications industry. She is a senior partner at Frog Capital where she sits on the board of Skimlinks. She is also the Non-exec Chairwoman of Opensignal, a UK based company that sets the gold standard for mobile experience globally.She is a passionate advisor and board member to companies wishing to transform their business.    As CEO, Chairwoman and Investor leading start-up, medium size as well as blue chip companies to create new markets and build winning teams to bring disruptive products to the mobile industry. Taking a partnership approach with key stake holders at board level, cultivating many close relationships to help deliver real value to customers.  Shirin is the winner of numerous awards including Blackberry Woman in Technology, Best Woman in Mobile, Business Woman of the year 2013, and European Entrepreneur of the year 2013.

Shirin Dehghan has a fascinating story about resilience, understanding when to make tough decisions and planning for her company’s sale. Shirin is a successful entrepreneur, having founded and sold Arieso. She is a seasoned angel investor and is a Senior Partner at Frog Capital. In Part 1 of her podcast you will hear how she learnt so much from the pitfall of a lost contract, and how much time and effort she spent to ensure the company was ready for a potential buy-out. This is a truly exciting entrepreneurial story, that includes a tough decision to ask her husband to step down as her CTO in order for the company to succeed in the States. Shirin founded, expanded and subsequently sold mobile communications business Arieso. A University of Southampton Engineering alumna, she has over 20 years’ experience in the software and mobile communications industry. She is a senior partner at Frog Capital where she sits on the board of Skimlinks. She is also the Non-exec Chairwoman of Opensignal, a UK based company that sets the gold standard for mobile experience globally.She is a passionate advisor and board member to companies wishing to transform their business.    As CEO, Chairwoman and Investor leading start-up, medium size as well as blue chip companies to create new markets and build winning teams to bring disruptive products to the mobile industry. Taking a partnership approach with key stake holders at board level, cultivating many close relationships to help deliver real value to customers.  Shirin is the winner of numerous awards including Blackberry Woman in Technology, Best Woman in Mobile, Business Woman of the year 2013, and European Entrepreneur of the year 2013.

Dr Simon Murdoch follows his instincts. He set up Bookpages in the mid-90's because he saw an opportunity to emulate Amazon in the UK. He has invested in some the most iconic UK start-ups of the last twenty years. He has become a figurehead for invested investors in London. He loves what he does, particularly learning something new everyday. In this podcast Simon describes why he set up a competitor to Amazon, what it's like to work for Jeff Bezos and how he transitioned into investing. Although he has experienced his share of failures, his eye for a successful start-up is remarkable.  Dr Simon Murdoch is Managing Partner of Episode 1 Ventures which runs two Enterprise Capital Funds investing c £100m in early stage software-driven businesses in the UK. Investments in Episode 1’s first fund include Aimbrain, Carwow, CloudNC, Emoov and Triptease. The second fund was launched recently and is looking for c 25 more companies to build from Seed to Series A and beyond. Simon is a highly experienced technology investor and has been an entrepreneur as well as a very active angel and venture capitalist. Previously, Simon was VP Europe of Amazon.com. He managed huge growth from start up in late 1996 through to multimillion turnover and hundreds of staff, ie from founding his own Internet bookselling company Bookpages in 1996, to acquisition by Amazon.com and launch of Amazon.co.uk in 1998, and its subsequent ultra-high growth. In 2000, he was founder and managing partner of Chase Episode 1, a $100m fund raised to invest at start up or early stage in Internet and technology businesses in Europe such as Betfair (IPO 2010), ScanSafe (sold to Cisco 2009) and First Tuesday. Unusually for a year 2000 vintage fund, Chase Episode 1 returned over 3x the amount invested to its investors. He also spent two years from 2010 at Octopus Ventures as Portfolio Director covering over 30 investee businesses including Evi Technologies, SwiftKey and Graze. Over the last 18 years, Simon has invested directly as a business angel and advised as non-executive chairman or director a number of successful Internet and mobile technology businesses based in the UK.

Neil Garner's background in technology led him from consulting to building contactless products. On his rocky eight-year journey he zig-zagged between running a company solo to NFC deals with Guinness and Nokia. In this episode, Neil revisits the decisions that took him on this odyssey. When the sector was disrupted by Apple he stepped down, and is now a serial entrepreneur. While he prefers face-to-face investment, he is currently crowdfunding his most recent venture; here he explains why and the crucial lessons to remember when taking this route. Neil Garner is a company founder, CEO, CTO, product innovator and board advisor with a long track record of creating & leading teams to deliver innovative new consumer services in the mobile payments, loyalty and marketing space. His latest business is Thyngs; he was co-founder and CEO of WhiteSpace Norwich, and co-founder & chairman of TechVelocity. He founded Proxama, which become a global leader in mobile wallets and mobile proximity marketing, and before that was a board director of Consult Hyperion. Everything Neil works on has always been guided by a strong belief that the real world and digital world can be better connected via smartphones, with simple, easy to use technologies like NFC enabling mass-market adoption of omni channel commerce through awesome experiences. He is also passionate about the evolution of Norwich, UK, as a tech city and Norfolk, UK, as a wonderful place to live. He has an MEng and DPhil from York University (building AI for speech recognition), and is also a charted engineer.

Ramona Liberoff is an experienced invested investor with decades of business experience. During her time running teams around the world for tech startups, such as Aqueduct and Movirtu, she built the vast organisational experience that she later used in her role in Innogy Innovation Hub's quest for a free energy network. In this podcast, Ramona discusses the real value of integrity in entrepreneurial teams. She has learnt lessons from both failures and successes, and here describes the qualities required for a good team. She also campaigns for women in investment and has experienced firsthand the struggle to be taken seriously in non-lifestyle businesses. Ramona Liberoff has an MA in Anthropology and Art History from Yale University and an MSc in Organizational & Social Psychology from London School of Economics. She is currently chief operating officer of the Innogy Innovation Hub, which backs start-ups in the energy industry. She also invests personally, often through the Angel Academe syndicate. She is passionate about system wide challenges that generate the opportunities of our time such as energy access, electromobility, and the more international development angles for blockchain and new technologies. Ramona is a frequent speaker, mentor, and panel contributor, with a deep network in London and Berlin since 2017.

Paul Forster is best known as one of the founders of Indeed, the largest job site in the world. He also has a substantial background as an Angel Investor, with successful involvement in a couple dozen projects across multiple technology sectors. In this episode, Paul takes us through the process of founding and funding Indeed. He defines his key features required to be a good investor, and how entrepreneurs should best create a strategy for their businesses before seeking investors. Mr. Paul Forster Co-Founded Indeed, Inc. and serves as its Senior Advisor. Indeed is the number one job site worldwide, with over 100 million unique visitors and 3 billion searches per month. Mr. Forster has over ten years’ professional experience in finance, both in industry and financial institutions, including International Finance Corporation. Mr. Forster Co-Founded Jobsinthemoney (NKA eFinancialCareers, Inc.) and served as an Investment Manager of the International Finance Corporation, and Manager of Anglo American Corporation . He has an MBA from INSEAD, MSc from Oxford University and MA from Cambridge University. He invests in early stage tech companies with ambitious founders, focused products, and market opportunities he understands. A notable exit of his portfolio was Twizoo, which was acquired by Skyscanner.

Jessica Dick spends most of her time helping early-stage entrepreneurs navigating the fundraising process. As co-founder of consultancy Five Years Time, she ushers entrepreneurs from technical backgrounds into the world of business. As investment manager at Synergy Growth, she has worked with around thirty different start-ups. What better guest could there be for the Invested Investor? In this episode, Jessica breaks down the issues with the ways many novice entrepreneurs ask for help, and outlines her five minimum requirements for being ready to seek investment. Jess manages a portfolio of investments of around 25 startups in the field of cleantech, social impact, healthtech, edtech, B2B and B2C software. She has worked directly with the startups as an advisor, board observer, and on a project basis - in investment readiness and fundraising, operations, business planning and strategy. Jess also mentors entrepreneurs outside of her investment portfolio, with Google Launchpad, London & Partners, Entrepreneurial Spark, Angel Academe, Hatch Enterprise and other similar organisations.   Jess recently co-founded Five Years Time, a partnership providing online training for entrepreneurs looking to raise their first professional funding round. Five Years Time offers online courses, webinars, templates and tools, as well as mentoring and 1–to-1 support for founders and teams, helping them understand what investors look for in an investment opportunity and how best to prepare themselves and their businesses for a raise. Jess is particularly passionate about advising women founders on breaking into the early stage investment ecosystem. Jess holds a BA in International Relations and Development, and an MA in Conflict, Security and Development. She is currently working on LearnAdapt, a project with the Department For International Development, advising them on what lessons can be learnt from investing in technology startups and applying them to improving the way DFID runs its programs and works with partners. She is part of a team introducing Lean Startup methods into adaptive programming, delivering Lean Impact.

Priya Lakhani is an entrepreneurial adrenaline junkie. She has founded two successful companies, won numerous business awards, and acted as an advisor to the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skills. Oh, and is an OBE. Her life's aim is to change the world for the better, and to that end she has funded meals in India, vaccinations in Africa, and her current project improves education for thousands of UK children. Remarkably, she has achieved all this despite a constant barrage of people telling her to "quit and go home". In this podcast Priya takes us through her astonishing career, from unloading boxes of sauce outside Victoria Street Station, to writing a book for preschoolers. She ends by summarising the entrepreneurial tips that have helped her come this far. Priya, former libel barrister, university law lecturer and founder of FMCG business Masala Masala, launched CENTURY Tech in 2015. CENTURY utilises artificial intelligence, big data technology and cognitive neuroscience to learn how every brain learns, personalise learning for every student and provide real-time data insights to educators. Priya has been a member of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills’ Entrepreneurs’ Forum and an advisory board member to several educational/skills organisations. Priya was awarded Business Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009, The Mayor of London Fund’s Special Recognition Award 2016 and Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2014. Priya now also presents on BBC World News as a commentator on world news, politics, business and technology on a bi-monthly basis.

Jonathan Milner's second Invested Investor podcast details his experience as a Cambridge Angel. Since he began in 2002 he has invested in forty different companies, very often leading deals as well. In this episode he shares his most important tips learned from an extensive entrepreneurial and investing history: from shouldering the burden of turning around a company in dire straits, to simplifying the decision of who to invest in.  Jonathan, co-Founder and currently Deputy Chairman of Abcam plc, is an entrepreneur and investor and is passionate about supporting UK life science and high-tech start-ups. He has provided considerable investment and support to over 40 companies and has assisted three technology companies to IPO on the London AIM Stock exchange. Jonathan gained his doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University after graduating in Applied Biology at Bath. From 1992–95, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Bath, following which he worked at the University of Cambridge in the lab of Professor Tony Kouzarides researching the molecular basis of breast cancer. He identified the market opportunity for supplying high-quality antibodies to support protein interaction studies, and in 1998, founded Abcam with David Cleevely and Professor Tony Kouzarides. Jonathan is also a non-executive director of Repositive, HealX and Syndicate Room. He is also Chairman of Axol Bioscience, Cambridge Allergy Therapy, and PhoreMost. In 2015 Jonathan, with Professor Tony Kouzarides, co-founded the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge. Also in 2015 he co-founded, with Professor Laurence Hurst, the Milner Institute for Evolution at the University of Bath.

Jonathan Milner was working as a postdoc in a Cambridge oncology lab when he was struck by an 'entrepreneurial seizure'. Inspired by his father, an engineer who ran a small company, he set up a venture to manufacture antibodies for biology research. Having come close to bankruptcy, Abcam is now worth £2.3 billion and renowned for its positive company culture. In this podcast, the first of two podcasts featuring Jonathan Milner, he takes us through this journey, and explains how lessons learned - as well as a single bucket of ice - turned a failing company into a world leader. Jonathan, co-Founder and currently Deputy Chairman of Abcam plc, is an entrepreneur and investor and is passionate about supporting UK life science and high-tech start-ups. He has provided considerable investment and support to over 40 companies and has assisted three technology companies to IPO on the London AIM Stock exchange. Jonathan gained his doctorate in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University after graduating in Applied Biology at Bath. From 1992–95, he was a post-doctoral researcher at Bath, following which he worked at the University of Cambridge in the lab of Professor Tony Kouzarides researching the molecular basis of breast cancer. He identified the market opportunity for supplying high-quality antibodies to support protein interaction studies, and in 1998, founded Abcam with David Cleevely and Professor Tony Kouzarides. Jonathan is also a non-executive director of Repositive, HealX and Syndicate Room. He is also Chairman of Axol Bioscience, Cambridge Allergy Therapy, and PhoreMost. In 2015 Jonathan, with Professor Tony Kouzarides, co-founded the Milner Therapeutics Institute at the University of Cambridge. Also in 2015 he co-founded, with Professor Laurence Hurst, the Milner Institute for Evolution at the University of Bath.

Neil McArthur sold potatoes door-to-door as a child in Salford. Then, with his engineering background and his own capital, he set up the business that would later become TalkTalk. In this episode of The Invested Investor, Neil revisits the deals, false starts, and market choices that led to his success in the telecommunications field. He still works for TalkTalk, but spends most of his time working to improve his home city's entrepreneurial ecosystem. In the second half of the podcast he explains how much Manchester has going on beneath the surface in technology and enterprise, and how the narrative needs to catch up to reality. Neil is currently the Group Innovation Director for Talk Talk, the Chairman, Founder and Trustee of Manchester Tech Trust, and the Chairman and Founder of the Hamilton Davies Trust (HDT). Neil was born in Irlam and is the son of a steel worker and librarian. He attended school in Irlam before completing an apprenticeship with BNFL in Risley (Warrington). He studied telecommunications at the University of Essex, who later awarded him an honorary Doctorate for his telecommunications and charitable work. A former member of the Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership during its inception, Neil is a passionate advocate of the role that business and industry can play in the ongoing revitalisation of communities and the broader North West region. He was recognised for his services to engineering being awarded an MBE in 1992.

David Gill's meandering investment journey has taken him from law, to corporate finance, to running fund operations at HSBC, to managing the highly successful tech incubator St John’s Innovation Centre, in Cambridge. Along the way he learnt some important lessons about early-stage startups. In this podcast David shares these lessons: the hard decisions early-stage entrepreneurs have to make; about his three rules for smart investment; judging an entrepreneurship ecosystem; and when investors should trust their instincts.    David Gill is Managing Director of the St John’s Innovation Centre in Cambridge. He previously ran the Innovation & Technology Unit at HSBC Bank in London (1997-2004), then served as an executive director of a technology venture fund (2005-08). Educated at Cambridge, he was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple before working in corporate finance for US and UK banks. A Sloan Fellow at the Stanford Graduate School of Business in California (2004-05), he is an Academic Visitor at the Institute of Manufacturing (University of Cambridge Department of Engineering), co-author of numerous publications on innovation, incubation and finance, and a non-executive director of Syndicate Room Ltd and Ask Inclusive Finance Ltd.

Bridget Connell is an Invested Investor, having started investing four years ago without any financial background, and has completed five deals since. In this episode she explains her hands-on style of investing. She has previously worked in technology, so supports tech startups, and she mentors female investors and entrepreneurs through the syndicate Angel Academe. Bridget is a strong believer in doing due diligence when working on a project; she stays close to each company she works with, and supports them by drawing other investors close as well. She talks here about her desire to see more diversity in the investment world.  Bridget started investing after a corporate career including stints at logistics giant DHL and mobile phone operator Telefonica.  She is the Founder of executive coaching consultancy Thinking Partnerships and is a board advisor and mentor to a number of startups.

William Makant and Yusuf Muhammad founded Plumis in 2008 to develop Automist, an innovative sprinkler system. A decade later Plumis has a £2 million turnover and Automist is installed in 5,000 homes - but everything about it is different, from the product itself to the people involved. The secret to their success? Being able to pivot, to change strategy by learning about a market's key drivers. In this podcast William and Yusuf describe their journey, and the how and the why of their dramatic course change. They outline the pros and cons of working with Angel Investors, and describe how raising more money at the start might have made the company less successful.  William is an experienced Mechanical Engineer and Product Developer with a family background in the fire protection industry. He led multiple engine development projects at the Ford Motor Company in Brazil, Germany and the UK before joining Plumis. William holds an MBA from Imperial College, London. He likes to cycle and has a keen interest in motorbikes. Yusuf is a co-inventor of Automist. He’s a multi-award winning industrial designer with an Honours Masters degree in Engineering and a double Masters in Innovation Design Engineering. Yusuf has experience working with P&G, The Department of Health and Research in Motion. Yusuf appeared in Big Life Fix, a science series following a group of tech experts as they tried to come up with innovative interventions to transform the lives of people all over the UK.

David Gammon a rare thing - an investor in technology with no technological background. Through his work as an Invested Investor and as CEO of Rockspring, he has supported entrepreneurs through some extraordinary successes. In this podcast, David describes his unconventional career path and how he sees the world. He talks about how crucial collaboration is for investors, and how he works with his family to make investment decisions. He has had his share of failures as well, and here explains how dealing with failure can make you a better entrepreneur. David founded Rockspring in 2002 after 17 years investment banking experience. He is a member of the Cambridge Angels. Other than leading and administering Rockspring, David spends most of his time providing advisory services, and enjoying time with his family and friends.

Modwenna Ress-Mogg is a world leading investor news provider. In this podcast, she openly portrays her diverse entrepreneurial journey, starting from the idea of delivering food from supermarkets in vans at the age of fifteen to Angel News, an online investor news platform. Unfortunately she wasn't able to gain 'funding' for her delivery idea, but she has successfully made Angel News into a world leading investor news provider. Modwenna is a prominent supporter of transparency and accountability in the early stage investment ecosystem.  Modwenna has 20 years working in corporate finance, business angel investment and venture capital.  She started www.AngelNews.co.uk  2003 focusing on media and events in the angel and VC market.  From £1,000 of start up capital, she has grown it into the leading information provider and commentator on the business angel market in the UK. The monthly AngelNewsletter sent to 10,00s angels and other investors is the broadest commentator on and a thought leader in the angel and wider private investor market (including VCTs and crowdfunding) in the UK. In recent years the AngelNews Group has expanded into assisting senior executives build second careers in the start and early stage entrepreneurial ecosystems through The Pluralists Club www.thepluralists.club It has also built a private investor conferences business including the Great British Private Investor Summit www.privateinvestorsummit.com, the VCT & EIS Investor Forum www.thevctandeisinvestorforum.com. She is a NED of quoted Albion Tech and General VCT, www.albion-ventures.co.uk and at Asset Match, www.assetmatch.com and a Co-Founder of FCA authorised (retail advisory permissions) ratings agency www.CrowdRating.co.uk. She has authored two books ‘Crowdfunding, How to raise money and make money in the crowd’ and ‘Dragons or Angels’, a handbook for people wanting to become or raise money from business angels.  She is a Visiting Fellow at Cranfield University and has recently been appointed UK High Commissioner for the World Business Angels Forum.

Rajat Malhotra is a seasoned Invested Investor, which was recongised by the UK Business Angels Association in 2013 as he won their prestigious Angel of the Year award. In this podcast with The Invested Investor, Rajat expressed to Peter Cowley about the thrill of learning from the bottom up, the phenomenal people he meets and the marvellous ideas that stem from start-ups. His experience has taught him so many lessons including predicting positives not negatives and investing in where your expertise is.  Rajat Malhotra founded Wren Capital as full-time angel investor in 2011 together with university friend Richard Cameron.  He was previously a competition lawyer in London and Brussels. Rajat acts as Wren's managing partner, responsible for deal sourcing, negotiation and ongoing support and monitoring of investments. Wren has invested in 48 companies over more funding rounds than he can count with 4 exits to date and 1 more coming very soon! Rajat was the UK Business Angels Association Angel of the Year in 2013.

Fiona Nielsen has applied her genetic disease research expertise into two notably successful organisations. First came DNAdigest, a non-profit educator, facilitator and engagee on issues regarding access to genomic data. She then realised that to get funding she needed to create a social enterprise. In this podcast Fiona expresses her reasons for founding Repositive, why she has chosen her board so meticulously, and that if you can't take a no, then don't start a company!

In our first themed podcast, Dr Anne Dobrée, of Cambridge Enterprise, outlines the importance of mentoring start-ups that have spun out of universities and that it is paramount to back the business rather than max the investment. Anne has worked in University technology commercialisation since 1999. Anne first joined the technology transfer team at the University of Cambridge in 2001, and has held a number of roles with Cambridge Enterprise and its predecessors including Head of Technology Transfer and Interim Director. Anne joined the Seed Funds team in 2008 and was appointed Head of Seed Funds in 2011. During her time at CE, Anne has supported many early stage companies and served on the boards of Pneumacare, Cambridge CMOS Sensors, Aqdot and Cambridge Touch Technologies to name a few. Anne was a founding member of Praxis, the UK Technology Transfer Training Programme. Away from Cambridge Enterprise, Anne has worked in technology transfer at Imperial College Innovations Limited, in pharmaceutical development at Evans Medical, and in pharmaceutical product training at Information Transfer. Anne holds a BSc in Medical Microbiology and a PhD in Immunology.

Simon Blakey reveals his top tips to Invested Investors and entrepreneurs in a fascinating podcast with Peter Cowley. Simon has been a full-time and hands-on business angel investor into early-stage businesses since 2000, having previously trained as a biochemist and management accountant before getting into property development. He works with his brother Michael under the Avonmore Developments umbrella (www.avonmoredevelopments.com) where he’s in charge of Avonmore’s operations, deal negotiations and ongoing support of the UK early-stage investments. Two decades of angel investing has resulted in an abundance of knowledge that Simon has built up, all of which you can listen to in his podcast.  He’s invested in 28 companies over 69 funding rounds and achieved 8 profitable exits to date, including Bybox -  taken from seed funding to a >£100M exit with no further equity financing. Simon sits of the Investment Committee of the UK’s Angel CoFund, is a Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music and is on the Board of the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts.

Quintus Liu is the founder and CEO of Healthera Ltd, a healthcare technology company based in Cambridge. His entrepreneurial journey started in 2014 when he established the Cambridge operations of a Silicon Valley-based venture capital that invests in university graduate entrepreneurs.  In this episode of The Invested Investor, Quintus expresses that he believes building a team is the hardest part of a start-up journey. Quintus and Peter discuss how hard it has been to penetrate the UK pharmaceutical market. However, advice and mentoring from the Healthera board have helped them with challenges.  He founded Healthera with two classmates during his final year at Cambridge University in 2015 out of an idea to get patients to safely take their medicines on time. Since then Healthera has acquired £2 million of funding from investors and government contracts and released a ground breaking platform that connects tens of thousands of patients and hundreds of pharmacies around the UK and Ireland.

Goncalo de Vasconcelos is the co-founder of SyndicateRoom, a multi-award winning UK online equity investing platform. In this podcast, Goncalo talks openly with Peter Cowley about growing SyndicateRoom using the philosophy 'hire slowly, fire fast', why Invested Investor's are paramount to each company's listing on the website and the advice he has to entrepreneurs looking to raise funding.  Gonçalo is the CEO and co-founder of multi-award winning online investment platform SyndicateRoom and was considered one of the Top 10 most influential people in tech in the UK at the Tyto Tech 500 Power List, as well as one of the Top 40 most influential people in fintech in Europe. He is a contributor for Forbes, a speaker and panellist at leading industry events on topics including equity crowdfunding, entrepreneurship, fintech, corporate finance, business angel investment and venture capital investment. Goncalo regularly contributes or is featured in the media including BBC, Forbes, Financial Times and The Sunday Times amongst others. A serial entrepreneur himself, Gonçalo is only too aware of the long path leading to a successful funding round which is why he is so determined to help entrepreneurs achieve their full potential. Gonçalo pioneered the investor-led™ model in the UK, opening up access to exclusive deals that professionals are investing in. SyndicateRoom is an equity investment platform that allows investors to access companies throughout their entire equity journey, from early stage private companies to premium segment listings on the main market of the London Stock Exchange. His leadership of SyndicateRoom is driven by his vision for fair and transparent access to investments by all investors – big and small, institutional and private investors.  Gonçalo is an alumnus of Imperial College London (awarded distinction) and has an MBA from Judge Business School, University of Cambridge where he was awarded awards for academic and professional achievements. In his spare time Gonçalo cycles long distances, plays tennis and, when in warmer climates, sails with his wife whenever there is half a chance. Produced by Mark Cotton.

Following on from Andy Phillipps first podcast, we are pleased to bring you part two. In part one, Andy described how he co-founded Active Hotels, selling to Priceline and eventually helping form Booking.com. Part two follows his transition into Angel Investing. Andy's first venture into investing came with Toptable, investing not only capital but importantly for the companies success, he invested his time and expertise. Andy was chair for the company for five years, before helping them sell to OpenTable in 2010. He subsequently began as chair of Reevoo and continues to be a Non-Executive Director for Trainline. Andy has become a prominent figure in the UK, sitting on the board of the Cambridge Angels and forming Active Venture Fund. Most importantly, Andy has learnt that founders need backing, not just with finances, but with advice, mentoring and the expertise of investors. Enjoy part two!

Excitingly, Invested Investor Andy Phillipps joined Peter Cowley for a two part podcast. In part one, Andy explains how he established the hotel booking company, Active Hotels, alongside his co-founder and cousin Adrian Critchlow. Active Hotels grew rapidly, bought by Priceline and merged with Bookings BV to become Booking.com. Andy's business model transformed the UK online hotel market and continues to lead global trends. Having successfully exited to Priceline, Andy describes how he approached the topic of aquisition, and then how he apporached the acquirers. Part two follows his transition into Angel Investing, what he learnt and his top tips for those looking to become Invested Investors.

In our latest podcast Peter talks to successful entrepreneur-turned-academic Martin Kleppmann. The two explore the companies that Martin has founded, and exited, including a move from the UK to the USA and back again. Alongside this, Martin discusses how he and his co-founders raised funds on both sides of the Atlantic, and the differences between Angel Investors in each country.

In this podcast Simon King talks to Peter about his journey to working in Venture Capital from a background in physical sciences and academia, via Africa. He talks about the challenges in transitioning from an academic background to the commercial world and how investments are considered at Octopus Ventures.

In this podcast, Richard Lucas describes how he has been promoting entrepreneurship 1991 and angel investing since the early 1990's. This episode focuses on Richard's advice and tips to entrepreneurs and angel investors, whilst endorsing the three T's to his businesses (Team, Traction and Technology). Within the podcast, Richard recounts his most memorable bad business experience, which involved a potential investor opening a briefcase filled with $30,000 in cash and a gun. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, as well as subscribing to our regular podcasts on iTunes and SoundCloud.

In this podcast Katy Tuncer talks authentically with Peter about her proudest failure, a start-up called Ready Steady Mums. She talks about the lessons she learned and how she brings them into her work today coaching entrepreneurs and other business leaders.  Ready Steady Mums is a community movement supported by the Institute of Health Visiting, Health Visitors and other medical professionals working with mothers in pregnancy and beyond.

Alex Schey co-founded Vantage Power. Peter and Alex chat about how Vantage Power took shape, the importance of a business plan and much more.  Vantage power designs and manufactures technology used in hybrid powertrains for new buses, as well as a retrofit solution for buses already on the road. Vantage Power's most recent award came in the form of the 'Most Distruptive Tech' at the UK British Angels Assocation awards 2017.    

Simon Thorpe was UKBAA Angel Investor of the Year 2016/17. He has an investment portfolio of close to 30 early stage tech companies and has achieved 5 exits including Swiftkey, CMOS Sensors, VocalIQ and CentraStage. Simon has had some hugely rewarding business journeys, both financially and personally and continues to be an advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs. He has made a career out of his passion for backing aspiring entrepreneurs creating innovative disruptive technologies. Angel Investing is an endurance race not a Grand Prix!

Peter Cowley introduces The Invested Investor podcast series, with the help of Chris Smith from The Naked Scientists. The two entrepreneurs will talk about why Peter decided to start the podcast series, what his background is and why he feels it will be a success.