Sean is an entrepreneur, investor, and believer in the power of people. He is currently a Venture Partner at Novak Biddle Venture Partners and Founder and CEO of Employ Insight. Prior to that he lived in London while working on Pikum, a social gaming business which was backed by Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and various venture capital investors. Prior to Pikum, Sean founded the higher education focused online financial services firm, Higher One. At Higher One he served as founding president and then as part of the executive team as Chief Marketing Officer for 8 years. During that time, Higher One reached profitability and in 2008 was in the top 100 of the Inc 500 list and ranked #12 on the Entrepreneur Hot 100 list of fastest growing U.S. private companies. Higher One went public in 2010 (NYSE:ONE).

Prior to Higher One, Sean helped found the Yale Entrepreneurial Society, and graduated from Yale with a B.S. in Engineering Sciences. Sean also has an M.A. in Applied Positive Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania. Sean continues to invest in entrepreneurs through Top Floor Capital, and work with them through both the Yale Entrepreneurial Society and Yale Entrepreneurial Institute. Sean has been featured in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, NY Times, Washington Post, and Entrepreneur Magazine. He spends time in DC, San Francisco, London, and Key West Florida with his wife, son, and 90 lb golden doodle.

Chris Havemann, President and Chief Executive Officer, of e-Rewards, Inc., had executive responsibility for the performance and development of the company. As of the end of September 2011 Chris stepped down as CEO of e-Rewards, in order to take some time out after 11 years.

Mr. Havemann commenced his career in the oil and gas industry in 1990 before moving to the Cable & Wireless Group in 1993, where he held business development and marketing strategy roles working in the UK, Spain, Italy and South Africa.

After completing his M.B.A. at London Business School, he worked for strategy consulting firm Marakon Associates before co-founding The Mobile Channel Ltd in 2000, a start-up seeking to develop permission-based, incentive-driven advertising solutions on mobile phones and PDAs. The company changed its business model in 2003 to focus on the rapidly emerging marketplace for online survey market research, and rebranded as Research Now. Mr. Havemann led the successful IPO of Research Now on the London Stock Exchange AIM market in 2005, followed by the acquisition of North American rival OpenVenue in 2007. Research Now was acquired by e-Rewards, Inc. in late 2009.

Mr. Havemann recently won the London Stock Exchange AIM Entrepreneur of the Year award for 2009. He was also a recipient of the London Business School alumni entrepreneurship award for later stage ventures in 2011.

Mike Harris is co-founder and Executive Chairman of the UK’s leading  online identity company Garlik, which develops software and services to help control and protect people’s personal information and identity online.

Garlik now operates in the UK, USA, Germany and  Italy and plans to launch in Turkey and India in 2011. It’s that rarity,  a UK technology company which is having an impact internationally.

Mike has created three iconic consumer businesses: Egg plc, the UK’s first online bank; Firstdirect, the world’s first telephone banking operation; and Mercury Communications, the UK’s second largest telecommunications operator. He turned each of these into £1 billion plus  concerns – Egg reached this figure in three years.

Mike was chairman of innovation at the Royal Bank of Scotland from 2005 to 2009 and was a regular speaker at mid-career MBA courses at the Sloan business School MIT from 1996 to 2008.

When he’s not occupied with Garlik, Mike works with  entrepreneurs and innovators in all sizes of business, helping them achieve breakthrough results.

Alastair’s focus in leading Monetise, is on creating the platform and partnerships required to evolve the mobile phone into the ‘secure remote control to money – for everyone’

He is a passionate believer in the potential of mobile banking and payments to deliver long term benefits to the developing world and believes that Monitise will allow greater access to financial services globally. This can only be achieved by combining the unprecedented reach of the mobile phone with the existing banking and payments infrastructure that is run by financial institutions and governed under regulatory guidelines in each territory.

Monitise was recognised as a ‘Technology Pioneer’ by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in 2006 on the basis of its ability to help social change. Alastair is a regular attendee at the WEF and has spoken on the challenges facing the World Economic Forum’s Global Growth Companies.

At 38, Alastair already has a proven track record of turning visions and ideas into real businesses. Prior to conceiving, financing and building Monitise, Alastair was a co-founder of epolitix.com, the network portal for Westminster, Whitehall and the devolved institutions. Alastair’s first business venture was the formation of a sports event and conference company in Malaysia. This followed an earlier career in professional rugby, playing at both club and international level.

Sean started Multimap.com as a bootstrap start-up in his spare bedroom in 1995 and built it into one of the 10 most popular British web services, with revenues of £12M and profits of £1M

Sean formed Multimap.com to bring together his lifelong love of sailing and navigation with his experience with the internet and web-based technology. Through Multimap, Sean realised his vision of services based on the integration of navigation, wireless communications and the web. He is one of Europe’s original internet entrepreneurs, with a unique combination of business and technical skills.  In December 2007 the company was acquired by Microsoft for £30 million, cementing its position in the ranks of Britain’s internet success stories.

Prior to founding Multimap, Sean was a principal consultant in KPMG’s Telecommunications and Media Convergence practice, where he advised major clients on products, services, regulation and marketing strategies. Also, Sean previously worked at the Yankee Group Europe, where he acted as principal analyst, consulting on data communications markets and trends.

He holds an MBA from Institute Theseus, in Sophia Antipolis, France, and an engineering degree from the University of Sussex.

Nick Jenkins read Russian Literature at University which lead to eight years in Moscow working as a commodity trader for Glencore. He returned to the UK in 1998 in order to set up his own business and used the MBA course at Cranfield as an opportunity to develop a number of business plans.

Immediately after finishing the MBA in 1999 Nick founded Moonpig.com, an online personalised greeting card retailer. After five years of losses and four rounds of angel investment the business made a profit and went on to become a household brand in the UK with over three million customers.

Nick sold most of his stake in July 2011 in a deal which saw the business merge with Photobox in a VC backed deal worth £120m.

Richard is the founder and CEO of Iglu.com, an on-line specialist travel retailer.   Having pioneered and grown the ski on-line market since 1998, Iglu has consolidated its position as the largest independent ski retailer in the UK and has applied its disruptive on-line marketing focus in the rapidly growing cruise holiday sector where, after only 5 years, it has become the largest on-line cruise retailer in the UK.  Iglu attracts over 5 million visits to its website every year and has a turnover of approximately £90m.

Iglu.com was launched during Richard’s final year of his MBA and began its life in the on-campus LBS Incubator.

Iglu.com has successfully raised over £6m of venture capital funds from Sussex Place Partners, Geocapital and Barclays Ventures and recently completed a secondary buy-out with Matrix Partners.

Richard is passionate about promoting entrepreneurship and has been a London finalist in the Ernst and Young, Entrepreneur of the Year awards in 2003 and 2004 and was awarded the Alumni Entrepreneurial Award from the London Business School in 2005.

Richard has been a mentor at the summer school for the last ten years.

Hugh has worked in the IT and publishing industry since 1976.  He worked for Apple Computer in the UK from 1979 when the personal computer industry was in its infancy.

In 1985 he established Taxan (Europe) Ltd, a wholly subsidiary of Kaga Electronics, Japan.  In an 18 period at the helm the business sold 5 million computer displays and graphics adaptors.

His personal goal to own and manage his own business was realised when he founded TrustedReviews.com in 2003 and acquired bit-tech.net in 2005.  Both on-line only publications quickly became market leaders in their respective sectors.  The sale of TrustedReviews.com in 2007 to Time Warner/IPC Media and bit-tech.net in 2008 to Dennis Publishing completed his ultimate goal.

Hugh is now involved with several start-up organisations and companies either as a mentor and/or investor. He also works with more established companies in non-executive roles using his considerable experience to provide advice and an independent voice on strategy, performance, risk and people.

He has invested in Net Communities (network and publisher), Lovestruck.com (dating), and ParkatmyHouse.com (car parking).  His non-executive Director roles include Time Out Group, Dennis Publishing and MyVoucherCodes.com.

Toby is the Founder and CEO of Mangahigh.com, a fast-growing mathematics site that is transforming the way students learn maths in school, and how educational resources are paid for.  Using gamification techniques, Mangahigh makes the experience of learning maths more entertaining, and motivates students to work harder in competition against each other, and students around the world.  Mangahigh was recently named one of The Telegraph’s Hot 100 list.  Toby is also a Board Member at the hot MMO, eRepublik.com.

In 2003, Toby co-founded King.com, serving as Co-CEO until his resignation in June 2008. During this period, King.com grew from start-up to be one of the world’s largest casual games businesses, serving an audience of around 12 million monthly unique users with more than 220 million gameplays per month in 2008. King.com received the UK Media Momentum award for #1 Fastest Growing company in 2007, and was the #5 Fastest Growing Company in 2008, receiving a special Judge’s Nomination in that year. King.com was also ranked #13 in the Sunday Times TechTrack list (UK fastest-growing tech companies) in 2008, and in November 2008, was ranked #5 in Library House’s list of Europe’s 100 ‘Hottest’ technology start-ups. King received

Prior to King.com, Toby was VP Marketing for uDate.com, which grew to be the #2 dating site for US / UK, and was acquired by IAC in December 2002 for $150m. In 1999, Toby co-founded clickmango.com, a natural health e-tailer, raising £3m in venture capital in a record 8 days. From 1994 to 1999, Toby worked at Walt Disney Television International, conducting quantitative customer research and marketing Disney Channels in the UK and Continental Europe. Toby studied Japanese at Wadham College, Oxford, and lives in London with his wife Plum and daughters Ursula, aged 4, and Tess, aged 1.

He is a dropout from the LBS Masters in Finance course.

Wednesday, 21 September 2011

Niall was born in Ireland and grew-up mostly in South Africa.  He trained as a computer scientist and worked in the family publishing business in the early 90s, while at the same time working on ICT policy for the African National Congress ahead of the introduction of democratic government in 1994.

In 1994, at the age of 25, he founded one of the first internet service providers in Africa in a joint-venture with Sprint in 1994, later sold to UUnet in 1998. He subsequently developed and sold a number of ventures in the early web market in 1998-2002, including an online recruitment website called jobs.co.za and a messaging business called eMessageX.

More recently, Niall sold The Cloud, a pan European wireless broadband business he co-founded in 2003, to British Sky Broadcasting for a reported £50M. Niall co-founded The Cloud in 2003 to realise a vision of a ubiquitous mobile internet enabled by low cost WiFi technology. The Cloud developed to be the leading public WiFi network in Europe, operating in 13 markets and serving millions of connections with integrated WiFi / 3G experiences.

Niall is currently a principal of Kubu Ventures, CEO of Ideaworks3D and Founder / CEO of Evrythng.  He also has a number non executive roles.