Meet the Team
Bryan Verster
Director - Entrepreneur Country
Hailing originally from South Africa, Bryan joined Ariadne as Director of Entrepreneur Country in August 2010. With over eight years experience in media, Bryan was previously Head of Online Sales and Marketing at Incisive Media. Bryan is a multi PPA award winner and is a specialist in launching, running and monetising online properties and events.
He has lived in the UK for the last 10 years and graduated with a Law degree from the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa.
Chris Fitzsimmons
Executive in Residence, Ariadne Capital Advisor, ACE Fund
Chris entered the technology world through working at Sagentia PLC, one of Cambridge’s three high tech consultancies. He then quickly moved on to launch his own consultancy firm, Technology and Finance Limited, advising start-up and early stage technology based businesses in the UK. Chris then moved on to set up far blue in 2000, a TMT VC fund focusing on TMT investments that raised its money from UK and US blue chip institutions. far blue was sold to Tower Gate PLC, a small listed merchant bank that focused on UK and US growth companies. Here he focused on turnarounds including a NASDAQ listed US cellular carrier, a Canadian soft switch company and a Spanish mobile content company.
Three years later Chris moved to YFM where he worked as an Investment Manager across three £30M funds, investing in companies ranging from telemetry to medical devices before striking out on his own and setting up his own consultancy firm to help companies on strategy, business planning and fund raising. In three years Chris completed 74 transactions, going from origination through to execution. On an on-going basis, he worked at board level to help plan, execute and review strategies for each investee. He also worked for UKTI as a Global Dealmaker to bring foreign companies into the UK.
At Ariadne Chris' role involves capital raising and business development. He is also author of “Managing Intellectual Property”, currently Amazon’s number one selling book in the Intellectual Property Management category.
Claire Langmead
Executive Assistant
Claire joined Ariadne Capital in October 2010, and is the Executive Assistant to CEO, Julie Meyer.
Prior to joining Ariadne Capital Claire was Team Secretary at Prudential Property Investment Managers, the property investment arm of M&G Investments, where she provided support to two Fund Managers & six Investment Managers.
Claire also previously worked with the event management industry, and has several years experience as part of an events team working on many promotional marketing campaigns for large companies such as Lexus, Toyota, O2, & T-Mobile. She also has many years experience within the entertainment industry as a dancer and singer. Claire has peformed in several theatre shows and spent 7 years touring theatres around the UK as, she has also appeared as a Background Artiste in TV & films.
David Scholtz
Principal and Director
David joined Ariadne Capital in 2006 to be part of the transaction team. His sector expertise includes digital entertainment, local media, online consumer services, e-commerce and online recruitment. David has championed and advised companies including BView, Enrich Social Productions, Nearworld Investments, Momail, Consenda and Digital Stores.
David's key focus areas include advising on capital raising, business growth strategy and partnership development as well as corporate advisory within the digital media and online services sectors. He has a strong grasp of new technologies, web development and consumer services.
Prior to Ariadne Capital, he was a Senior Business Analyst at Yahoo! Search Marketing, a division of Yahoo! Europe, for three years where he worked in the European Operations Finance team as a finance business partner to the European YSM Business Development team. Prior to Yahoo! Europe he was at Monster Worldwide (European subsidiary of Monster Worldwide Inc) for four years as European Business Analyst, working across the European Finance and Sales divisions with the European CEO, CFO and Head of Sales.
David has a dual BA Psychology degree from Richmond the American International University in London and the Open University, is a Swedish South African and speaks Swedish, Afrikaans and some French and Dutch.
Diana Nye
Business Development Director
Diana Nye is a Business Development specialist with more than 16 years of leadership experience with a special emphasis in enterprise and ASP software, CleanTech, collaboration, convergence, and innovation. She has worked with a range of companies from start-ups to some of the largest and most influential corporations in the US, Europe and Asia delivering sales and marketing, business strategy and transformation, business process improvement, product development and management, fund raising and team development success.
Diana came to the UK to grow the Workgroup Information Sharing platform at European Software Publishing (ESP) and advanced to the role of Business Development Director until the acquisition of ESP by Powerway.
As the VP for European Sales at Powerway, she was responsible for Ford Europe, PAG, General Motors/Opel, MG Rover, Renault, PSA, Nissan and Covisint. She was also the Project Coordinator for European initiatives in global projects at Ford and General Motors and managed alliance relationship and QS 9000 with Tier 1 and Tier 2 suppliers. Diana was active in the European Automotive speaker circuit presenting on the automation of quality systems, B2B and Six Sigma. Diana continues to maintain her network within the automotive and engineering industries, working on innovation and incubators within research institutions and start-ups and has extended her focus to include CleanTech.
Most recently she has been working on global go-to-market strategies for Anglo-American joint ventures and was part of the vielife leadership team the drove the acquisition by CIGNA CareAllies.
Diana has a B.A. from the University of Maine ant Orono and a M.A. (hons) from West Virginia University.
Declan Cunningham
Advisor
Responsible for the management of any tax issues relating to the Fund as well as any investor-related tax structuring matters, Declan Cunningham has been advising Ariadne Capital since 2000. His company, CC Secretaries Limited, was appointed company secretary on 15 August 2005. Declan was a tax partner in the Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Services Office in London for six years and he has been a partner in accountancy practices since 1990.
In July 2005, Declan established his own practice, Cameron Cunningham LLP. Declan has been advising entrepreneurial companies for many years and he has a specific focus on high tech companies, including web-based and biotech companies and their stakeholders. His clients range from start-ups, where his firm provides the complete business service envelope, including accounting, company secretarial, VAT and payroll, through to AIM companies, where he provides the tax compliance and consultancy advice required. Declan works with many of Ariadne's portfolio companies.
Ian Findlay
Director of M&A and Corporate Advisory
Ian Findlay joined Ariadne Capital in September 2008, further strengthening the deal team's capabilities and bringing with him a wealth of international experience in the TMT sector.
A highly experienced business professional, Ian has spent over 20 years working in strategy formulation and M&A initiation and execution. His track record speaks for itself: in his previous position with Emap plc, he was responsible for 47 completed transactions with a total value of £4.5 billion - 32 acquisitions and 15 disposals.
Ian spent 16 years with Emap, during the last six of which he was Director of Corporate Development and latterly a member of the Executive Board. This position saw him execute a major reshaping of the Group, including disposing of some sectors of the business, acquiring strategically advantageous companies and redirecting spend to faster growing, more profitable sectors.
He also worked closely with the Executive Chairman and the CFO on the break-up of Emap, selling consumer activities to Bauer and B2B to Apax/GMG. In difficult markets, the successful execution of this process, which saw value creation for shareholders and a premium of 58% achieved on the remaining sale of plc/B2B, was widely applauded in the financial community.
Prior to joining Emap in 1992, Ian was Business Development Director of RBPG, a division of Reed Elsevier.
Ian is MBA and degree qualified, and has worked in the USA, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Italy and the Middle East.
Ian Powell
Senior Advisor – Financial Management
Ian Powell has worked in the media industry for 19 years, recently selling the plc that he acquired and developed as a BIMBO in 1993.
Ian was Group Finance Director of the Maiden Group plc. Maiden, the largest independent UK outdoor media operator, which was sold for£56 million in May 2006 to Titan Outdoor Inc, a US company majority owned by Welsh Carson.
Prior to Maiden Group Plc, Ian worked at Clearchannel UK, More O’Ferrall Adshel Ltd, and retrospectively a career in telecommunications/bakery and FMCG.
Jonathan Simnett
Senior Adviser, Ariadne Capital
Jonathan Simnett has nearly 30 years' experience, winning in excess of three dozen awards, building businesses and helping public and private sector organisations and their investors in fast-growth B2B and B2C segments to: grow; manage change: reposition; enter new markets; acquire; float and report through the delivery of more effective management and marketing communications strategies.
Leader of the team named Global Communications Department of the Year at the 2009 International Business Awards, New York, he was formerly vice chairman in the UK of Brodeur Worldwide, a global public relations consultancy. He was part of the team that founded and built a company of 650 people and $95 million turnover worldwide over a period of 15 years, before selling to Omnicom. He also sat on the board of Brodeur in Europe and became one of the UK’s first Investor in People.
He has worked with established companies in periods of rapid change such as: AT&T; Avaya; BT; C&W; Cisco; HP; Huawei; Infosys; Intel; Myriad; Novell; Informix; IBM; Nortel Networks; OpenReach; TCS; Time Out Group and Sybase. In addition, he has also worked with fast growth or venture-backed companies taking many to sale or public offering including: Blast Radius; Calyx; Civica; Concateno; Centiq; Clear; e2v technologies; Gear4; Getjar; Global Graphics; Holition; Intuwave; Interoute; KeyPoint Technologies; Technis; marketingQED; SpinVox; WEEE Systems, Westhouse Medical and Zomm.
He has also delivered campaigns for CEOs and financiers and advisory firms such as Ariadne Capital and Battery Ventures and their portfolios and for government organisations such as: European Commission DG XIII; Innovation Norway; Locate in Scotland; Royal Norwegian Embassy; Salford Regeneration and Thames Valley Enterprise. In addition, he's worked with the management teams of agencies including: Chameleon; CognitoMedia; Komodo; Fleishman-Hillard; Midnight Communications; Positive Marketing and Rochester PR Group.
Julie Meyer
Founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, Founder - Entrepreneur Country, Managing Partner - Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund [ACE]
Julie Meyer believes that Individual Capitalism aligns and releases people's ingenuity for the solving of the world's problems at the macro and micro levels as well as accelerating the future.
Julie founded Ariadne Capital in August 2000 to create a new model for the financing of entrepreneurship in Europe and the UK - "Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs". She created the founding Investor Partnership of 59 leading entrepreneurs and business builders who are Ariadne's core shareholders.
She has led or co-led the investments and/or advisory mandates with BeatThatQuote, Espotting, Monitise, SpinVox, and Zopa.
Julie was part of the early team at Tom Teichman's NewMedia Investors in 1998, which became early stage investment firm Spark Ventures in October 1999. At NewMedia Investors, she co-managed deals in key technology companies including ArcCores, lastminute.com and WGSN. Also, in 1998, she founded First Tuesday, the network of entrepreneurs, which many credit for igniting the Internet generation in Europe. It was sold in July 2000 for $50 million in cash and shares.
She has been named one of INSEAD's Top 50 Alumni, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, TIME Magazine Digital 50, one of WIRED's 100, one of London's 1000 Most Influential People (Evening Standard) and one of the Top 30 Most Influential Women in Europe.
Julie is also one of the BBC's Online Dragons in the award-winning Dragon's Den Online, and is also currently setting up a "Dads and Daughters" foundation to support and extend her thesis that women's identities are shaped - for good or bad - by the messages they receive from their father's as children and young adults.
She is on the Board of Directors of Jellybook, Medikidz, Vestergaard Frandsen, a for profit humanitarian development firm, and INSEAD, her business school. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities and English Literature from Valparaiso University, near Chicago, US in 1988, having spent her junior year in Cambridge, UK in 1986.
In 2011, she was asked to be on the Secretary of State's Entrepreneurs Panel and the Secretary of Health's Innovation Panel.
To schedule a call or appt, contact Claire Langmead on claire.langmead@ariadnecapital.com.
julie@ariadnecapital.com
Karima Serageldin
Director, Ariadne Capital Ltd | Partner, Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs (ACE) Fund
Karima Serageldin has significant TMT product management expertise having spent ten years leading product innovation and development, product partnerships and profit improvement projects in the internet space at MCI/Verizon and latterly at Pipex Communications.
While at Pipex, Karima was responsible for product management of the fixed and wireless internet access and VPN products sold by Pipex, before joining its M&A and corporate advisory deal team, where she was instrumental in securing £150m in seed funding from Intel Capital for a WiMAX joint venture with Pipex (Freedom 4 Group) and executing Pipex's customer-based acquisition of Cable and Wireless plc arm Bulldog.
Since the sale of Pipex, Karima has been working in venture capital both on the investment and advisory side, notably leading early stage venture investment, and acting as non-executive advisor to the board of a seed stage digital media company.
While at Ariadne Capital, Karima has advised digital media and technology companies such as EGS, gnuTrade, Monitise, Slicethepie, and SpinVox. Karima brings to the Ariadne team combined operational industry experience and end-to-end knowledge, delivering strategic, product and financial solutions for a range of stakeholders; B2B, B2C, consulting and investors across internet/telco and digital media. Sector interests include music, voice innovation, SaaS, IPTV, and mobile applications.
Kit Ruparel
CTO in Residence
Kit is a board experienced CTO and CIO with a skill-set across software development, IT systems and company operations.
The majority of his career has been spent growing start-ups or turning around SMEs that may otherwise have been regarded as 'end-of-life'.
Having mostly worked for private-equity or VC backed organisations, Kit's skills have been regularly used by investors to evaluate companies they may have an interest in, perform due-diligence activities, or assist with growth or turnaround strategies.
With an exceptional ability to rapidly understand a new product or service, the business model around it and whether the technology and operations are helping or hindering the company vision, Kit is as comfortable operating within experienced boards as he is probing lines of source-code with the developers and engineers.
Extremely innovative, Kit rapidly finds solutions to any technical or operational challenge; and as well as having patents to his own name is also excellent at identifying the unique product features or methods in others' intellectual property and then making the most of them from a business perspective.
Kit's network and access to skills is very broad, having worked with experts across virtually every technological discipline, using development and BPO organisations across most continents, peering with 'deep' contacts (i.e. true technology owners, not evangelists) inside organisations like Microsoft, and negotiating products, services and partnerships from the largest name-brand companies down to the smallest specialist suppliers.
Kit is a Chartered IT Professional and has voluntarily assisted the British Computer Society, the National Computer Centre, the DTI, the Learning and Skills Council and the government e-Skills programme on a range of topics from Professionalism in IT initiatives to defining skills frameworks for CIOs through to IT end-users.
Pavel Stoyanov
Assistant to the Financial Controller
Pavel joined Ariadne Capital in 2011 as Accountant having previously worked in ERA and AG Capital. Hailing originally from Bulgaria he has lived in UK for the last 11 years and graduated with Master Degree from the University of Economics in Varna. Pavel is an Associate Member (ACSI) of CISI holding a Certificate in Securities.
Nathan Ghann
Analyst
Nathan Ghann, selected at House of Lords as one of the Top Ten Most Outstanding Graduates in the UK recently joined the Ariadne team as an Analyst. He holds a double first class in Economics and Marketing and is Board advisor to one of fastest growing entrepreneurial societies in the UK, UH Entrepreneurs. Passionate about the millennial generation and macroeconomics he holds a keen interest in researching social media, clean technology and digital consumer behavior.
Paul Macavoy
Senior Advisor Talent
Paul has over 16 years experience in the Executive Search and Talent Advisory market. His core areas of expertise include Talent Acquisition, Management and Development, with a particular focus on the people dynamics that effect start-ups and high growth businesses experiencing change.
The majority of Paul’s experience is within the Technology, Telecommunications and Media Sectors and includes extensive work with early stage start-ups as well as FTSE 100’s and leading Professional Services firms.
He is currently advisor to a number of CEO’s in the TMT market and works closely with them to create dynamic and effective leadership teams.
Steve Piper
Financial Controller
Previously employed by Sea Containers Ltd for 29 years reaching the position of Group Chief Accountant responsible for producing and filing the consolidated accounts of both Sea Containers and Orient Express Hotels Ltd . A hard working individual with experience within the leisure activities (hotels & train), publishing, travel industry, container leasing, manufacturing, shipping and property development.
Steve O’Donnell
Senior Advisor
Steve O’Donnell has over 30 years global experience working at C-level in large multinational organisations. He was CEO at MEEZA, a Qatar Foundation Joint Venture, Managing Director at ESG, Global Head of Data Centre Operations at BT and has held senior positions at Cable & Wireless, Lehman Brothers, and Deutsche Bank.
He is globally recognised as an expert in green IT and sustainability having won six industry awards including the British Computer Society best use of green technology award in 2007. He is an active angel investor and Non Executive, working in Smart Grid, Sustainability, Data Centre cooling technology, IT Security and the IT Services sector. He is an inventor and holds a number of patents in the data center cooling area. In 1999 one of the companies he led as CEO won a Fast 50 special award from Deloitte & Touche for rapid company growth achieving over 3000% in three years.
Steve is a entrepreneur, and a global businessman, with a deep understanding of how to drive performance and efficiency in the organisations he manages. He has successful experience in six trade sales, two MBOs and an IPO. He is an active participant in social media with a loyal following on his blog http://www.thehotaisle.com and a growing audience on Twitter @stephenodonnell. He likes to add value in analysing and understanding the problem, identifying the customer segments and honing the message and product offering to help drive sales execution.
Tobias Straessle
Senior Advisor
Tobias Straessle is an internationally experienced senior business executive with over 30 years in the financial services industry as line manager and management consultant. He has a track record of shaping & implementing new technology-based business operating models & services, scaling businesses for growth, managing complex business & organizational change programs, optimizing value chains for higher productivity and better cost efficiency, building & leading large multi-cultural, high-performance IT and Operations teams.
His expertise includes business and technology innovations in capital markets trading & settlement, wealth management and asset management, service outsourcing/insourcing, technology due diligence, people development and coaching, management and strategic leadership of operations & information technology departments.
Tobias Straessle is today engaged on various fronts: He owns Grey Cells Associates Ltd, a Management & Technology Consulting firm; he is a Senior Advisor of Eleven Canterbury Ltd., a firm that coaches small to mid-sized technology-based companies for Financial Services market entry; he is Chairman of Saxo Bank (Switzerland), the subsidiary of a global investment bank offering online capital markets trading and investing for retail, professionals including White Label partners. Previously Tobias spent over three years with Saxo Bank Group, as COO and CIO, based in Copenhagen, 15 years with UBS/SBC Investment bank in London & Zurich, one year with CBI in Geneva, seven years with Andersen Consulting and a few years with Credit Suisse. Tobias holds a Master Degree in Mathematics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETHZ) and an MBA from J.L.Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Chicago. He speaks English, German and French
Tobi Alli-Usman
Project Manager - Entrepreneur Country
Tobi joined Ariadne Capital as Project Manager at Entrepreneur Country in July 2010 having previously worked as project coordinator in the Enterprise Department at the University of Hertfordshire. Tobi graduated from the same University with a BA (Hons) in Business and Digital Media. Whilst at university, Tobi co-founded the UH Entrepreneurs Society and set up his own project management company successfully completing over 25 projects.
In 2008, Tobi was awarded the University of Hertfordshire 'Most Entrepreneurial Student Award' and in 2010 was recognised as one of the UK's 'Future Leaders' and 'Top 100 Most Outstanding Graduates' by Powerful Media.
Tom Peterson
Marketing Manager - Entrepreneur Country
Tom joined Entrepreneur Country in 2011 as Marketing Manager having previously worked in online for Incisive Media. Tom became involved in online marketing after completing his BA Marketing and Advertising degree and has worked across 10 different websites and 3 conferencing platforms before joining the Entrepreneur Country team. Tom is passionate about developing websites, the growth in viral marketing and multi-channel campaigns.
A keen traveller, Tom has lived across Eastern Europe, Southern Africa and briefly in America.
Travis Baxter
Operating Partner
Travis Baxter has thirty years experience of consumer media with specific expertise in content development, consumer change and business strategy. He spent the first 5 years of his career at the BBC and since then his experience includes working at divisional MD level for RTL group and the FTSE 100 company EMAP and working as an operating partner with Advent International. Travis is currently media advisor to the Turkish private equity firm Actera, a non-executive director of South West Screen and of Slicethepie, and is Content and External Affairs Director of Bauer Media in the UK. He also sits on the board of a number of UK radio trade bodies.