A Guide
to the Sixth Year Anniversary of Ariadne Capital
GO BIG OR GO HOME
A
European Entrepreneur’s Manifesto:
Changing
the Rules of the Game
I.
Our
Speakers
II.
Our
Portfolio and Corporate Partners
III.
Our
Investors
IV.
Our
Team
VII.
Tribute
VIII.
A
Short History of Ariadne Capital
IX.
Key
Articles
a. A European Entrepreneur’s Manifesto,
Financial Times
b. No one in the EU can keep books as badly
as the EU, Sunday Telegraph
a.
SpinVox
– Voice Enters the Blogosphere
b. Monitise - Banks continue to join MONILINK network as the opportunity
in mobile banking grows
d.
Cellectivity - 888.com
Partners Up With Cellectivity To Develop Mobile Casino Platform
XI.
Investment
and Partnership Opportunities at Ariadne Capital as of 26 February 2007
XII.
One of
Ariadne’s Big Bets for 2007 – Gravity Zoo
XIII.
New
Ariadne Services
a.
Ariadne
Marketing Services Introduction
b.
Ariadne
Talent Service Introduction
XIV.
From
the Founder – And Now We Are Six – with apologies to A. A. Milne
I. Our Speakers
GO BIG OR GO HOME
A European
Entrepreneur’s Manifesto:
Changing
the Rules of the Game
The
Panellists for the Ariadne 6th Year Anniversary Event will share with
you tonight how they have changed the rules of the game in their industries
with their companies:
Changing
the Rules of the Game in Financial Services:
o
Lars
Christensen, Founder and CEO, SaxoBank
o
Alastair
Lukies, Founder and CEO, Monitise
o
Christopher
Samuelson, Founder, Mutual Trust
o
James
Burchetta, Co-founder and CEO, Debt Resolve
Changing
the Rules of the Game in Telecoms and New Media:
o
o
Kevin
Meagher, Founder and CEO, Intamac
o
Martin
Varsavsky, Founder, FON
o
Glenda
Stone, Founder and CEO,
Since 1987, Lars has been
involved in derivative sales and trading. He began his career at the
London-based futures broker, Petley & Co (now ECU Group), but was soon
headhunted to join LIT Europe, the European arm of leading futures clearer LIT
America, as a manager of the company's Scandinavian Desk. In 1990, he took over
an identical position at American broker Gerald Metals, to assist the company
in developing its newly started foreign exchange department, again with
particular responsibility for Scandinavian financial institutions.
Lars was a founding shareholder
of Midas (now Saxo Bank) in 1992, and eventually joined the company in early
1995 as a director, responsible for the company's trading operations. With
considerable financial and business acumen, Lars has been jointly responsible
with Kim Fournais for the formulation and implementation of the company's
business strategies and new ventures ever since. In September 1999, following
the establishment of CLMarkets.com, Lars assumed the post of Managing Director
for Midas with additional responsibility for the overall management of the
company. After Midas´ repurchase of Credit Lyonnais´ shareholding in
CLMarkets.com in early 2001, Lars again shares the position of joint Chief
Executive Officer with Kim Fournais.
Saxo Bank is a specialized Danish investment bank founded in 1992 and is
headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark. The bank was awarded full European
bank status in 2001.
The Bank is privately held with its co-founders, Kim
Fournais and Lars Seier Christensen, holding majority stakes. Private Equity firm General Atlantic bought
a minority stake in June 2005 and invested USD127 Million. The bank expanded
its physical presence overseas for the first time in 2006
with branches opening in London, UK
and Singapore.
Saxo Bank facilitates global capital markets trading and investing
through its online trading
platform. It offers a broad suite of investment banking products including Forex,
Stocks, CFDs,
Futures, Funds
and Bonds. Private Wealth
Management services are also offered to high net worth individuals
and families. Roughly two-thirds of the Bank's activities are derived from
partnerships with licensed financial intermediaries including banks, brokerage
firms, FCMs and institutional trading partners.
Saxo Bank is named after Saxo Grammaticus, a famous Danish
warrior/theologian and alleged to be the first historian of the Danish people.
Saxo Bank's
businesses can be broadly categorized into 3 areas: Private Clients,
Institutional & White Label Partnership and Private Wealth Management.
Private Client services focus on enabling
individuals to trade the different financial instruments online.
Institutional services include institutional
trading services, introducing brokers and White Label Partnerships (WLP). The
White Label Partnership business accounts for more than half of the bank's
revenue providing an efficient, scalable re-distribution of the bank's core
competencies to a broader public. The business reaches thousands of end-users
through 80+ WLP relationships in 40+ countries.
In a White Label Relationship, the trading
platform and back office risk management and client account management systems
are branded in the identity of the partner. The partner must be a licensed
financial institution able to hold client funds, and appropriately regulated
for securities, currency and derivatives trading in its local jurisdiction.
Saxo Bank provides the technology and a suite of value-added business
development, planning and strategic services while the white label partner
provides on-the-ground distribution, sales, marketing and client servicing.
Private Wealth Management is a relatively
new growth segment for the bank.
ALASTAIR LUKIES – LEADING ENTREPRENEUR
IN
- 33 years old - former professional
rugby player turned three times serial entrepreneur
- Has created the world first cross network, cross bank mobile banking and
payments infrastructure...first customers include all the UK's mobile networks,
Royal Bank of Scotland, first direct and HSBC
- Winner of World Economic Forum - Technology Pioneer 2006 at 2006 Davos
meeting
- Customers include all major UK mobile networks and the UK's high street banks
- Currently working with banks and governments worldwide to create an
international mobile banking and payments network.
Alastair Lukies is a serial
entrepreneur who successfully built and sold the well known
Evans conferences youngest ever Managing Director, where he headed up the Asia
Pacific region at the age of 25.
This entrepreneurial spirit was
kicked off when, at the age of 23 and a professional rugby player in
at Asia Pac companies wanting to offer entertainment to clients during the
following year's Commonwealth Games. He sold this to Marcus Evans a year
later and joined the firm heading up their Asia Pacific region.
This was soon followed in 1999 by the launch of ePolitix.com where Alastair
helped improve the overall transparency of
Monitise, his current venture,
is the fulfilment of his and Steven Atkinson's vision (the chief designer of
Vodafone live!) of bringing revenue into the mobile environment, to allow
consumers to control their finances from the handset and also allow the
purchase of goods and services - such as topping up an Oyster card or pre-pay
mobile phone, paying the congestion charge or even authorising purchases from
online
merchants such as Amazon.com.
The core principle behind their
vision was the creation of an 'ecosystem' for mobile banking and
payments. Historically, mobile banking and payments efforts have failed
due to the 'point to point' (bank to single operator) approach taken.
This is due to the fact that it was not ubiquitous and it expected customers to
make a buying decision for their mobile phone on the basis of their choice of
their financial services provider. Alastair and Steven's vision was to
create an environment where regardless of your mobile network or your bank,
customers would be able to see their financial
Alastair and Steven approached
Morse Group with the plan, who in turn agreed to incubate the business to help
bring it to market. By leveraging the group resources of Morse Group,
Alastair has been able to
commercialise the venture and enter the
In terms of success.
Monitise has now launched the MONILINK UK service and has deals with all the major
Monitise is currently in the
process of rolling out the service into international markets, with its eyes on
both the advanced banking environments in Europe and North America as well as
the developing world
markets of Africa, South America and
internet access of the developed world. However, mobile phone penetration
is increasingly high and by allowing individuals or traders to manage their
finances on their mobile, it encourages them to move
into the electronic banking environment - ultimately lowering the barriers to
national/international trade and opening the doors to development finance due
to the increased traceability of the environment. Alastair has become a Global Leader of
Tomorrow/World Economic Forum in 2007.
Christopher
Samuelson is Chairman/CEO of Mutual Trust, specialist, a solution provider for
global cross border financial planning and emerging market private equity
investment. He is a board member of RMC Kyoto, the Russian ecology investment
company set up in 2006 at the behest of the Presidential Administration and
whose Director General, Professor Leonid Maslov, is Ecology Advisor to
President Putin.
With ten years of business experience
and leadership at the forefront of commercial enterprise, Christina co-founded
SpinVox in March 2003 as the world’s first voicemail-to-text service for mobile
and fixed line telephones. Christina is
a true entrepreneur. She founded her first business in technology-based
services in
Christina came up with the idea of
voicemail-to-text when trying to access her voicemail while rushing between
meetings in 2003. Following research and development, the service was launched
in October 2004 and immediately captured the interest of the mobile industry –
with SpinVox achieving tens of thousands of customers in the first few months,
winning the global GSM Association ‘Mobile Innovation’ award and partnering
with leading mobile retailers, distributors and operators.
In
2005, Christina was named a finalist for both the ‘Technology Entrepreneur of
the Year’ at the UK Technology, Innovation and Growth Awards and for ‘Innovator
of the Year’ at the British Female Inventors & Innovators Network. Christina has a Masters in Finance from
SpinVox brought together the two
most popular methods of communication – voice and text – and created a new
category of messaging called Voice-to-Screen. Its award-winning technology is
now enabling everyday communication to be exciting, more powerful and above all
simpler through the simple gestures of speaking and reading. These unique
experiences are driving new recurring revenues for mobile and fixed-line
operators.
At
the heart of SpinVox is its patented Voice Message Conversion SystemTM
(VMCS), which underpins the company’s retail, enterprise, service provider and
global carrier products. VMCS is maintained on an enterprise-class hardware
infrastructure by an expert management team to meet the rigorous demands of
global carriers. SpinVox created the
world’s first Voicemail-to-Text service in 2003, which was launched in 2005
through partnerships with major UK retailers such as The Carphone Warehouse,
The Link, Caudwell Group/4uBusiness and Hutchinson 3G.
Able to support multiple languages, SpinVox now
leads the way in powering the convergence of voice and screen in today’s
messaging markets. As well as serving retail brands and a growing direct
customer base, the company’s innovative products are in service with global
carriers and internet brands.
SpinVox -
because speaking is the most natural way to send a message, and reading the
most useful way to receive one
KEVIN MEAGHER
– CEO & FOUNDER, INTAMAC, PIONEER OF THE CONNECTED HOME
Kevin Meagher,
CEO of Intamac, is one of the pioneers of The Connected Home in
CEO of Intamac Systems, Kevin is a
Chartered Engineer with an MBA and additionally is a recognised expert in
aircraft systems and logistics. As Group
Captain in the Royal Air Force he worked with complex avionic systems on modern
combat aircraft where networking was essential to improve their capability,
cost, efficiency and safety. With the advent of the Internet, Kevin saw how new
server platforms could be used to network systems and appliances in the home to
deliver these same benefits to consumers.
It was out of this work that his vision for The Digital Home was born. Intamac Systems Ltd has developed a web-based
service platform that exploits broadband to network and control devices and
delivers a range of innovative services to the connected home market. Intamac’s platform both enables its corporate
partners to deploy rapidly new product/service bundles and provide its own
customers with a branded universal interface or portal through which they can
monitor and control devices in the home.
The
Company currently employs 22 staff, 19 at its UK HQ outside
Since
securing its first major contract in 2003, the Company has completed what it
defines as Phase 1 of its growth where it has:
·
Developed a web-based platform giving consumers
the ability to monitor & control devices in the home remotely
·
Launched a number of applications that focus on
security & home monitoring where there is a large, easily addressable &
growing market
·
Secured strong channel partners with many
leading
·
Obtained worldwide interest in its technology
& secured multi-million dollar deals with Bell Canada & Insurance
Australia Group (IAG) as well as being well-advanced with companies in the
·
Adapted the platform to support other
applications including: Telecare; Telemedicine and Home Automation
·
Advanced projects with: Linksys; AT&T;
Verizon; Samsung, KPN and other market leaders
·
Secured patents & IP to protect its
technology lead & market position
·
Won awards including Red Herring Top 100 and
Fierce WiFi Top 15 for 2006 and was a
finalist in the 2007 Sharp Edge awards
The Company is enjoying the benefit of
being first to market with innovative products and services offered as White
Label solutions to its corporate partners.
Intamac was the first European company with which Linksys
partnered. To date, Intamac’s current partners
have over 60 million customers and they have already committed to invest over
$40M to take the new services to market.
MARTIN VARSAVSKY –
CEO & FOUNDER OF FON
Martin Varsavsky is an Argentinean/Spanish telecommunications and new
media entrepreneur.
Born in
At the age of 16,
Varsavsky and his family escaped from the Argentine military dictatorship and
emigrated to the
Since July 1995,
Varsavsky has been living in
For the past 8
years, Varsavsky has been teaching courses on “entrepreneurship” at the Instituto
de Empresa Business School,
In
1990, Varsavsky founded Viatel. Viatel used a system to provide long distance
services to customers based outside the
Martin’s
current venture is FON,
founded in November in 2005, a community-empowered company dedicated to
building the world’s largest global WiFi network bottom up, spreading the power
of WiFi around the world, with one million hot spots by 2010. Fon attracted
Skype, eBay and Google as partners and quickly became the largest WiFi
community in the world.
He is married and
is the father of four children.
GLENDA STONE, FOUNDER & CEO, AURORA
Glenda is
founder and CEO of Aurora, a