{"id":263,"date":"2009-05-20T00:01:29","date_gmt":"2009-05-20T00:01:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/about-2\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T13:45:41","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T12:45:41","slug":"about","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/about\/","title":{"rendered":"About"},"content":{"rendered":"

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>, a 25-strong (mainly mobile and, more lately, AI) software development house, a partner at Brainworks Ventures<\/a> (AI-native venture studio), including the Brainworks Foundry<\/a>, and Chair of SchoolGPT<\/a> (AI for school children).<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Further, I am a co-founder of Tech North Advocates<\/a>, a non-profit focused on promoting the role of tech in the North of England, a coach for the EIC Accelerator<\/a>\u00a0the European Commission’s European Innovation Council<\/a> (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<\/a> 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<\/a> and the Cancer Tech Accelerator<\/a>).<\/p>\n

In between, I also did a stint in the life sciences when I was the Chief Commercial Officer at the Medicines Discovery Catapult<\/a>, 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.<\/p>\n

Before all that, I was the Chief Strategy Officer at Scoreloop<\/a>, mobile social gaming\u00a0platform, which I\u00a0helped grow to 450m users. When the company got acquired by\u00a0BlackBerry<\/a>\u00a0(a deal I led), I served as the latter’s Global Head of Business Development \u2013 Games.<\/p>\n

I have\u00a0been lucky to be at the forefront of industries that were once described \u201cniche\u201d since\u00a02000 (mobile phones). I helped launch the world\u2019s first mobile music services (with\u00a0Britney Spears<\/a>, Duran Duran<\/a> and Snoop Dogg<\/a> amongst others) and published games\u00a0on tiny mobile (feature) phones (including Call of Duty 3<\/a> [max file size was 254kb!], X-Men 3 and the first titles for\u00a0a small studio called Rovio<\/a> \u2013 later of Angry Birds<\/a> fame). I am an M&A lawyer by original profession.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I have delivered more than 130 keynotes and panel sessions around the world, including at SXSW<\/a> (Austin), TEDx<\/a> (Barcelona & Manchester), the Mobile World\u00a0Congress<\/a> (Barcelona), UNLEASH (Paris), CTIA<\/a> (Las Vegas), Mindshare Media Summit<\/a> (Dubai), Digital K<\/a>\u00a0(Sofia), SmartCon<\/a> (Istanbul), GDC<\/a> (San Francisco), Casual Connect<\/a> (Seattle), Picnic\u00a0(Amsterdam), Web Summit<\/a> (Dublin), Israel Mobile Summit<\/a> (Tel Aviv), Alcatel Lucent\u2019s 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<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>… On parle fran\u00e7ais…\u00a0<\/p>\n

Check my LinkedIn profile<\/a> for a full run-down of my bio.<\/p>\n

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…<\/p>\n

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<\/a> – the European Law Students Organisation – where we obtained consultative status with the UNESCO<\/a> and the UN<\/a> as well as a special relationship with UNHCR<\/a>. We also lobbied hard for the establishment of the International Criminal Court<\/a> and ran more than 40 conferences per year. Since you never leave them, I am also an Advisory Board Member of the ELSA Alumni<\/a> organisation, which continues to strive to fulfill our promise as embodied in our vision all the way back when:<\/p>\n

“A just world in which there is respect for human dignity and cultural diversity”.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Hirsch_2CV_201305\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Boring but necessary disclaimer:<\/strong><\/span>\u00a0<\/strong>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.<\/p>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-263","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/PaSwZv-4f","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=263"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2584,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/263\/revisions\/2584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}