Staffan Helgesson

Current Firm: Creandum

Location: Sweden

Class: KF 10

Bio:

Staffan is a General Partner at Creandum in Stockholm, Sweden, and has worked in the Nordic venture industry since the 1990s. He brings significant company-building experience, drawing lessons from the many ventures with which he's been associated. Staffan has set up two venture firms and been involved in over 30 Technology investments, across all sectors. Staffan is currently on the board of Edgeware, Norstel and Xtract. He is Chairman of the Board of the Nordic Venture Network. 

Before founding Creandum, Staffan was the founder and Managing Partner of the VC firm Startupfactory. He also brings extensive international management experience from McKinsey & Company, Procter & Gamble and IKEA, working in the Nordics, Europe and Asia.

Julia Hawkins

Current Firm: LocalGlobe

Location: United Kingdom

Class: KF 18

Bio:

Julia focuses on health, and has also backed companies in the creative industries and fintech. Her investments include: AccuRx, CoMind, Gilion, Robeaute, Oxford Nanopore, Spore.Bio and YuLife. 

Her mission is to back ambitious, thoughtful and diverse founders to transform healthcare from scarcity of clinicians and appointments to ease of access through technology and to enable new and better treatments to reach patients.

QUOTE: “My daughter was diagnosed with a rare condition which meant that I had to navigate several health systems and I found it really difficult to get to a diagnosis. But I also saw that there was a lot of promise in terms of both how healthcare could be delivered, if better digital tools were used, and how technology could help to get to better therapies.”

Julia’s centre of gravity is London with the Francis Crick Institute on Phoenix Court’s doorstep and DeepMind, UCLH and Royal Free Hospital nearby. She’s Swedish and is excited about fantastic Nordic founders with global ambitions, and is seeing phenomenal healthcare talent in Israel and Boston.

QUOTE: “I really like founders that can help me understand their unique perspective – whether it be life experiences, or previous companies that they've built or been associated with – that have led them to the insights that they have. I also look for founders where I can understand and see their ability to attract talent and build teams. There’s something about founders who are able to draw people in, with their energy, with their insights, with their vision that's absolutely fundamental to building a company at the very early stages.”

Julia’s career began as an associate in Fixed Income at Goldman Sachs in London. Passionate about startups, she joined Last.fm in 2007 as Business Operations Manager – the ground-breaking music startup’s first generalist hire. In what became one of Europe’s early landmark deals, Last.fm was acquired by CBS.

Julia then joined BBC Worldwide, the corporation’s commercial arm, as Digital Strategy Manager, and worked with all product teams from news to games, before joining Universal Music UK, where she helped launch its corporate venture arm, where she became a Kauffman Fellow.

Reshma Sohoni

Current Firm: Seedcamp

Location: United Kingdom

Class: KF 16

Bio:

Reshma Sohoni is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Seedcamp, the European seed fund she co-founded in 2007 with a strong belief that European entrepreneurs have the power to compete on a global scale. Over a decade later and Seedcamp has pioneered the European early-stage investment landscape and backed over 500 companies including publicly listed Romanian-founded, UiPath, Wise (formerly TransferWise), and unicorns Revolut, wefox, Pleo, Sorare, Grover, viz.ai, and Synthesia. Reshma is frequently listed as one of the most influential women in technology and VC and has been recognised on Forbes Midas List for Europe as one of the most influential VCs on the continent 5 years in a row. In 2019 she also made it to the no1 spot on the FT’s most influential BAME tech leader list. Reshma was awarded an MBE for services to the British Technology Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in 2021. Reshma is passionate about the intersection of business and technology and has degrees in Engineering and Business from UPenn and M&T as well as an MBA from INSEAD.

Taavet Hinrikus

Current Firm: Plural

Location:

Bio:

Taavet is a partner at Plural, the early-stage fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. He co-founded Wise in 2010, where he was CEO and later Chairman, which went public in the first-ever direct listing in Europe in 2021. Prior to that, Taavet was Skype’s Director of Strategy until 2008, having joined as its first employee. He’s been an active investor for more than a decade, looking for 10x better solutions to huge problems that have impact globally. He also co-founded Jōhvi Coding School to help increase the number of people with coding skills in Estonia. Taavet sees technology, education and entrepreneurship as the most potent agents of positive change and progress, and his commitments reflect his dedication to that.

Fredrik Cassel

Current Firm: Creandum

Location: Sweden

Class: KF 12

Bio:

Fredrik is one of Europe's most experienced investors and one of the most trusted advisors to the Creandum portfolio companies. Fredrik is an early backer of several companies that have grown to dominate their respective markets, such as Spotify (NYSE:SPOT), KRY / LIVI, depop, and Kahoot! (KAHOOT:NO). Focused on B2B and B2C companies disrupting large markets, often with marketplace models, he also leads or has led Creandum's work with Virta Health, Shapr3D, Xeneta, Careship, Soundtrack Your Brand, Cint (sold to Nordic Capital), Videoplaza (Ooyala), 13th Lab (Facebook) and Autobutler (PSA Group).

Saul Klein

Current Firm: Phoenix Court

Location:

Bio:

Saul is co-founder and Executive Chair of Phoenix Court, the home of LocalGlobe, Latitude, Solar, Basecamp venture capital funds and the Phoenix Court Works foundation. He is a serial entrepreneur, operator and investor with over 30 years experience starting, building and exiting innovative startups in the UK, US, Israel and Europe.

Before founding Phoenix Court, Saul was a General Partner at Index Ventures for eight years. In his previous lives he was co-founder and original CEO of LoveFilm (acquired by Amazon), part of the original leadership team at Skype (when it was acquired by EBay) and more recently the co-founder of Platoon (acquired by Apple). He has also co-founded some of Europe’s pioneering venture programs including Seedcamp (Europe’s first accelerator), Zinc with the LSE and the Newton Venture Program with London Business School.

Saul sits on the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and was a founding NED for the UKs new department of Science Innovation & Technology (DSIT). He has also recently become a member of the government’s Creative Industries Taskforce, supporting the budding of a long-term plan to grow the UKs creative industries. He serves on Camden’s STEAM Commission and Economic Renewal Commission and works closely with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority on its regional innovation strategy. Saul was also a trustee of Comic Relief for six years.

As his X handle has noted since March 2007, Saul is first a husband and second a father to three children aged 18, 17 and 10 before being a founder, operator and investor.