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Ariadne Capital Secures New Investor Members:
Jo Wood Goodson and Toon Den Heijer
Ariadne Capital was founded in December 2000 by
Julie Meyer , and capitalised by 26 founding Investor
Members who decided to back Ariadne's vision of building
a purely entrepreneur-centric investment and advisory
firm in Europe for global tech, media and communications
firms. These founding Investors have founded themselves
some of the world's most successful firms; for a
complete set of their biographies, please send an
email to investors@ariadnecapital.com ,
and you will receive this by return email. Ariadne Capital's founding Investors invest actively
in early stage companies through Ariadne Capital
as well as on their own. They bring investment opportunities
to Ariadne Capital as well as act as Non Executive
Directors and Senior Advisors for many of Ariadne
Capital's portfolio companies.
In the past couple of months, two new entrepreneurs
have backed Ariadne Capital: Jo Wood and Toon
Den Heijer .
Most recently Jo
Wood was Managing Director of Avanquest
UK Ltd, following the acquisition of MediaGold by
Avanquest's parent company BVRP. She co-founded MediaGold
UK and, with further offices and bases in France ,
Italy , Spain and Germany , created an entity that
gave US software publishers access to the European
market place. The UK company experienced high growth
and solid profitability between 1998 and 2003 and
the business was sold to French company BVRP at the
end of 2003. Clients included Intuit, Random House,
Serif, IMSI, IBM, Scansoft, Lernout & Hauspie,
Expert Software and SAS. Jo was responsible for the
general and financial management of the business as
well as for strategic sales. Jo continues to consult
for BVRP/Avanquest, primarily on M&A pre-diligence
projects. She is also a shareholder of an industry
PR agency. Prior to MediaGold, Jo ran the European
Sales Division for the US consumer publisher Broderbund.
She was the second employee of the company and took
it from startup to £12m in revenue in two years.
Major contracts included a $3m pan-European OEM with
Hewlett Packard. Jo graduated from Bristol University
with an honours degree in German. She lived and studied
in Hanover for one year and speaks fluent German.
She also speaks French. Jo is married with one child.
Toon den Heijer is currently
Founder and Partner of Origins VC Africa – www.originsvcafrica.com and
is based in Amsterdam . Toon has had a 20-year career
in venture capital, both in establishing and growing
funds, and in making direct investments in early
stage companies. He was the former Managing Director
of Gilde Investment Management - http://www.gilde.nl/ and
one of the pioneers in European and Israeli technology
investing.
If you would like more info rmation on investing in
Ariadne Capital and its funds, please do send an email
to Julie@ariadnecapital.com |
Ariadne
Capital Journal - Through the Maze Volume
5, Edition 3 
