Speakers

Emil Eifrem
Co-founder and CEO, Neo Technology

Emil is co-founder and CEO of Neo Technology and the Neo4j open source graph database project, which is the most widely deployed graph database in the world. Part of the lightning hot “NOSQL” space, graph databases are said by analysts like Forrester to “boom in 2012 as companies everywhere adopt them” and Neo4j is leading the pack with a roster of top tier customers like Cisco, Adobe and Deutsche Telekom. Or at least that’s what Emil would like you to believe!

As a life-long compulsive programmer who started his first free software project in 1994, Emil has with horror witnessed his recent degradation into a VC-backed powerpoint engineer. He founded Neo4j’s commercial sponsor Neo Technology in Sweden in 2007 and in 2011 raised a $10M series A and moved the company’s headquarters to Palo Alto, CA, followed by an $11M series B in late 2012. Emil intends to marry European “sustainable pace” with American “aggressive ambition” and build Neo Technology into an American company with a Swedish soul.

Anna-Clara Blixt Modin
Founder, StagePool and Ubetoo

Anna-Clara is an entrepreneur and a performer. She started StagePool in 2000 after realizing that 90 percent of her time was spent job hunting. Today, StagePool is Northern Europe’s largest job site for the entertainment industry.  For a low monthly fee, members can create a profile with a CV, photo, video and voice samples and apply for thousands of jobs every month. StagePool has 22 employees based in Stockholm and Cologne, Germany. Last year, more than 70 000 quality assured and paying jobs in Sweden and Europe were matched with 7 000 paying members and 60 000 people in the free artist catalogue. The goal is to within three years establish StagePool in the UK and then in the US.

In 2008, she has also founded Ubetoo.com, a global distribution platform for music and entertainment not yet signed by a recording company or publisher. Ubetoo offers its members the possibility to distribute their music to more than 500 media stores, such as iTunes, Spotify and Amazon MP3.

Harry Briggs
Early Stage Tech Investor, Balderton Capital

Harry joined Balderton Capital in 2009. Balderton is one of Europe’s largest VC funds, an early investor in e.g., Betfair, MySQL, Lovefilm, Wonga, Livebookings, Wooga and Natural Motion. Harry looks particularly at consumer internet spaces such as e-commerce and e-learning, and has been closely involved with the fund’s investments in e.g., Tictail, Memrise, Medicanimal, Achica, TheHutGroup and SaatchiOnline. 

Prior to Balderton, Harry co-founded Firefly Tonics, a health drinks company, in 2002. From the initial idea – a healthy alternative to an energy drink – he grew the business into a widely-recognised luxury brand, with customers in 35 countries. He remains a shareholder and board member. Prior to Firefly, Harry was at McKinsey & Co. in London and New York, advising businesses on branding, marketing, and portfolio improvement. He also spent a year at Hutchison 3G, developing their marketing strategy prior to the launch of “3”, the UK’s first mobile 3G network.
 
For more info, please follow Harry at www.twitter.com/H4ryB

Pawel Chudzinski
Co-founder and Managing Partner, Point Nine Capital

Before co-founding Point Nine Capital in 2011, Pawel was a co-founder and partner at Team Europe where he led Team Europe’s investment activities. Prior to that, Pawel worked as an Associate for the US investment banking firm Greenhill & Co. in Frankfurt and London. Previously, he graduated from the Leipzig Graduate School of Management (HHL). He is fluent in English, German and Polish and has a basic command of Russian.

For more info, please follow Pawel's blog at: www.pawel.ch

Ben Holmes
Partner, Index Ventures, London

Ben is a Partner at Index Ventures, having joined the London office in 2002. Ben focuses on the software and internet sectors and has been actively involved with many of the firm’s consumer and media investments. He currently sits on the boards of Gray Area Labs, Just-Eat, Mind Candy, Netlog, Notonthehighstreet, Rebtel, Shapeways and Stardoll. He was previously a Director of Panther Express and Playfish (Electronic Arts).Prior to joining Index Ventures, he worked at the NewMedia Spark investment fund, before becoming Vice President at EO plc, a Spark portfolio company in the consumer financial services sector. Previously he spent four years at OC&C Strategy Consultants, advising firms in the retail and IT sectors.

For more info, please follow Ben’s blog at: www.ben.vc

Pär-Jörgen Pärson
General Partner, Northzone Ventures

Pär-Jörgen has been active in venture capital and private equity since 1994, starting out with buy-outs in the consumer goods sectors, backing companies such as Falcon Breweries (sold to Carlsberg) and Candelia (sold to Cloetta Fazer). He also privately acquired Falkeskog Delikatesser, a distressed seafood producer, which he managed through a successful turn-around process.

Between 1998-2001 he built Cell Ventures, an early-stage technology venture capital company to one of the hot European Internet investors with portfolio companies such as Pricerunner and Tradera, and which was sold in 2000 for SEK 1.2 Billion.

Pär-Jörgen previously worked with McKinsey & Co. in Europe and the US, serving clients within the telecom, technology and consumer goods industries.

Per Roman
Managing Partner, GP Bullhound

Per Roman is one of the founding partners of GP Bullhound. He has completed trade sale and fund raising transactions and has made investments in and for European technology and Internet companies for well over a decade. Recent transactions include leading digital companies like Avito.ru, Neonode and Tradedoubler. He started his banking career at Lehman Brothers Inc., focused on technology M&A and equity capital market transactions. Per also has experience from the software industry where he held roles in Europe and the US for Autodesk, Inc.

Sitar Teli
Managing Partner, Connect Ventures

Sitar Teli is a managing partner with Connect Ventures, an early-stage fund focusing on European internet and mobile companies. Connect Ventures' investments include: Citymapper, Teleportd, Space Ape Games and YourGrind.   Prior to Connect Ventures, Sitar was with Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures for seven years and was a board member of SoundCloud, MegaZebra and Handmade Mobile.