About

I am an entrepreneur, advisor and angel investor who has founded and co-founded a total of 7 companies to date. I am currently a co-founder of Blue Beck, a 25-strong (mainly mobile and, more lately, AI) software development house, a partner at Brainworks Ventures (AI-native venture studio), including the Brainworks Foundry, and Chair of SchoolGPT (AI for school children).

As an angel, I am investing in education technology, AI, “deep” tech and (some) biotech with a portfolio of a 20+ personal investments to date, mainly in the UK (though past investments covered Seattle, Atlanta and Hamburg, too). I was a Partner at Amadeus Capital, one of the UK’s oldest and most successful Venture Capital firms, where I have been investing from its early-stage funds. The fund is investing at Seed and A stage, mainly in “deep” technology startups in AI/ML, human-machine interfaces & autonomous systems/robotics, cyber security, MedTech, digital health & computational biotech, quantum computing and novel materials.

Further, I am a co-founder of Tech North Advocates, a non-profit focused on promoting the role of tech in the North of England, a coach for the EIC Accelerator the European Commission’s European Innovation Council (supporting everything from precision fermentation and voice biomarkers to autonomous robotics and federated-learning AI models), including as a selected mentor in the New Biotech Platforms vertical of its Scaling Club programme, as well as a mentor and coach at a number of programmes (e.g. the AI Accelerator of the University of Manchester’s Turing Innovation Catalyst and the Cancer Tech Accelerator).

In between, I also did a stint in the life sciences when I was the Chief Commercial Officer at the Medicines Discovery Catapult, a not-for-profit science organisation that helps to industrialise cutting-edge research and to adopt new scientific tools and techniques for discovering new medicines.

Before all that, I was the Chief Strategy Officer at Scoreloop, mobile social gaming platform, which I helped grow to 450m users. When the company got acquired by BlackBerry (a deal I led), I served as the latter’s Global Head of Business Development – Games.

I have been lucky to be at the forefront of industries that were once described “niche” since 2000 (mobile phones). I helped launch the world’s first mobile music services (with Britney Spears, Duran Duran and Snoop Dogg amongst others) and published games on tiny mobile (feature) phones (including Call of Duty 3 [max file size was 254kb!], X-Men 3 and the first titles for a small studio called Rovio – later of Angry Birds fame). I am an M&A lawyer by original profession. 

I have delivered more than 130 keynotes and panel sessions around the world, including at SXSW (Austin), TEDx (Barcelona & Manchester), the Mobile World Congress (Barcelona), UNLEASH (Paris), CTIA (Las Vegas), Mindshare Media Summit (Dubai), Digital K (Sofia), SmartCon (Istanbul), GDC (San Francisco), Casual Connect (Seattle), Picnic (Amsterdam), Web Summit (Dublin), Israel Mobile Summit (Tel Aviv), Alcatel Lucent’s 4G Summit (Las Vegas) and Ericsson Mobility World (Zurich) in addition to often more guarded events by corporate clients. I have spoken to audiences totalling more than 100,000 people to date. For more on my speaking stuff, go to my, err, Speaking page.

I am German by birth and a naturalised Brit but have lived in 5 countries so far, worked in 20+, travelled to over 65 and did deals in more than 100. I am European and consider myself a citizen of the world. I am also partial to the Loire valley where I try to spend as much time as I can in our beautiful Clos de la Mazere… On parle français… 

Check my LinkedIn profile for a full run-down of my bio.

Despite law school, I had my first e-mail address as early as 1991 (though there weren’t many to communicate with which made it less thrilling), and the passion for new technological frontiers never left me since…

It was not only e-mail (and of course studies – focus on corporate, commercial, competition/anti-trust, European and international law as well as arbitration) though: I was also a member of the International Board of ELSA – the European Law Students Organisation – where we obtained consultative status with the UNESCO and the UN as well as a special relationship with UNHCR. We also lobbied hard for the establishment of the International Criminal Court and ran more than 40 conferences per year. Since you never leave them, I am also an Advisory Board Member of the ELSA Alumni organisation, which continues to strive to fulfill our promise as embodied in our vision all the way back when:

“A just world in which there is respect for human dignity and cultural diversity”.

Boring but necessary disclaimer: The opinions posted on this blog are my own and do not necessarily represent the ones of any company or organisation I am affiliated with.