Judges 2012

Seb Bishop

CEO, Goop

Seb Bishop is the CEO of Goop. Goop is Gwyneth Paltrow's weekly lifestyle newsletter. Founded in the fall of 2008, with an ever-growing number of subscribers, goop provides valuable information on a wide variety of subjects including food, travel, fashion, beauty, and wellness. Tapping into the knowledge and expertise of a diverse range of contributors including healers, doctors, fellow actors, musicians, chefs and an eclectic group of good friends, Gwyneth curates each newsletter with an editorial eye for the best of what's available in any given area. By doing thorough research, and never hesitating to ask questions, goop makes an enriched lifestyle accessible to a growing community of readers and subscribers. Available in both English and Spanish, the newsletters are archived on goop.com, making the website an indispensable tool.

Prior to GOOP, Seb was the International CEO of (RED), the business founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to raise money from the private sector to help fight AIDS in Africa. (RED) has forged partnerships with some of the world's most sought-after brands - American Express, Apple, Belvedere Vodka, Bugaboo, Converse, Dell, Shazam, Diptyque, Penguin Books, Emporio Armani, Gap, Nike, Hallmark cards and Starbucks (and more to come) - to create desirable (RED) branded products, with up to half the profits going to the Global Fund. Since 2006, (RED) has raised over $170 million (as of September 2011) for the Global Fund helping over 7 million people in Sub Saharan Africa.

 

Richard Brass

Director, Berenberg Bank

Richard Brass joined Berenberg in June 2011 and is a member of the management team of Berenberg's UK private banking business. His responsibilities include Berenberg"s Entrepreneur's Office and family office advisory business.

Having trained as a chartered accountant with KPMG and worked in their corporate finance team, Richard moved to Compass Advisers, an international corporate finance advisory business, where he co-founded their European office. He moved to Montpelier Asset Management in 2006, an emerging markets investment firm before joining Schroders Private Banking in 2008, where he used his experience to advise business owners and entrepreneurs. He is a Director of the recently founded Montpelier Foundation Limited which will look to support charities and social impact businesses globally.

He also works with the owners of a wide-range of social impact businesses through his involvement with Wavelength Connect, a global leadership programme for business leaders, entrepreneurs and social innovators.

 

Xavier Court

Co-Founder & Marketing Director

Born in Saint Etienne in 1966, Xavier Court is currently Marketing Director at vente-privee.com. As the head of an international team comprising 30 staff, Xavier coordinates all website activity related to Customer Marketing, Marketing Intelligence, Website Marketing, Press Relations and Advertising Management.

Having graduated from the ESLSCA (Paris) in 1989, Xavier started his career with the Danone group. After 2 years in New York as a marketing manager for Maille mustard, Xavier moved to Paris to become Sales Manager at LU for a 2 year period before becoming the Customer Services Manager at LU for a further 2 years. He finally became the national Key Account Manager for Belin/LU again for 2 years. In 1997, Xavier helped to form D2i, specializing in major brands destocking. He then co-founded vente-privee.com with his partners in France in 2001. The website is now active in France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom. With a net turnover of 510 million Euros in 2008 and more than 900 employees (with 250 new recruits predicted for 2009) this online shopping club is one of the great success stories of the internet in France and across Europe.

Sherry Coutu

Angel Investor

Sherry Coutu is an angel investor and serves on the boards of companies, charities and universities.

As an entrepreneur, Sherry established and successfully sold two businesses in the financial services industry. The first (acquired by Euromoney plc) has operations in more than 70 countries. The second was floated in 2000 on London and Nasdaq and the company was valued at more than $1 billion before being acquired (by AMP plc). Sherry is active in early stage investing and has raised several rounds of venture capital and public equity totaling more than $200 million.

Sherry has decades of experience serving companies which range from fast growth private early stage to public and boards with turnover of more than £ 1 bn.

She is a frequent public speaker, and presents regularly at top business schools. She specialises in consumer, internet, information services and clean energy.

Current university affiliations include Cambridge University and Harvard Business School. Charitable / Government affiliations include the Prince's Trust, Cancer Research UK and NESTA.

 

Nancy Cruickshank

Executive Director, Digital Development, Telegraph Media Group

Nancy joined Telegraph Media Group (TMG) in May 2009 as Executive Director, Digital Development. Nancy's focus is on growing TMG's digital proposition and revenues. This includes the award winning Telegraph.co.uk which attracts over 30million unique users per month globally.

Prior to TMG, Nancy was Global CEO of VideoJug, the market-leading How To website. Nancy has worked in the digital industry for over 10 years in a range of high profile and senior roles, including Managing Director at Hearst Digital and Handbag.com.

At Hearst (following their buy-out of The Handbag Group for £22m in late 2006), Nancy oversaw their portfolio of web properties including Handbag.com, cosmopolitan.co.uk, netdoctor.co.uk and menshealth.co.uk. Under her leadership, the Handbag audience grew to over 1.3 million women per month and launched three subsidiary titles, getlippy.com, allaboutyou.com and gomamatoday.com.

Nancy lives in London and Devon with her husband, Jim and two daughters.

 

Farley Duvall

Founder, White Bull Summits

White Bull Founder Farley Cash Duvall has been involved in the High-tech sector for over 15 years. He is known to many in this space as the "Connector," building relationships and making things happen amongst his worldwide network of peers. Farley's vision stems from the idea that in order to excel in business, people need the right connections, great networking opportunities, and a dynamic forum for discussion.

Farley has held sales, marketing, and management roles with several professional services, consulting and media organizations, beginning his career at DASAR in 1992 and including CBT Systems, Fabrik Communications, (acquired by Critical Path), Whitman Hart (leading integrator of SAP) and others. Until the fall of 2009, Farley led all EMEA operations for Red Herring Magazine.

Currently, Farley sits on the advisory board of Red Alpine Capital and Woodside Capital Partners.

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, Farley resides in Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Anil Hansjee

Head of M&A Emea, Google

Anil is Head of Corporate Development at Google for Europe, Middle East and Africa, based in London. Prior to joining, Anil was a Director at the boutique investment banking firm GP Bullhound and immediately before that he was a Principal with the venture capital firm IDG Ventures, where he was board director of one of their portfolio companies, the mobile music company, Shazam Entertainment.

Between mid 2000 and the end of 2001, Anil was a Vice President for corporate finance with Bear Stearns International in London. Between mid 1997 and mid 2000, Anil was a member of Chase Manhattan Bank's corporate finance group both in New York and London. Anil joined Chase's corporate finance team after spending the first 7 years of his professional career as a software engineer first with UBS then Chase. Anil has a BSc.(Hons.) in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from Edinburgh University and has an MSc. in Finance at London Business School.

 

Nils-Holger Henning

Chief Communications Officer, Bigpoint

Nils-Holger Henning joined Bigpoint GmbH as Chief Communications Officer (CCO) in 2005 to establish the finance department and the company's vast network of media partners. In addition, he is active as a company spokesperson, and regularly gives keynote addresses at major international industry conferences, such as the Games Convention Asia in Singapore, the European Game Developer Summit in Mallorca, the MIPCOM in Cannes, the Casual Connect in Kiev and in Hamburg, and the Browser Game Forum in Frankfurt. Before joining Bigpoint, Henning worked for a number of well-known companies, including AOL, Whirlpool, and Sport Voswinkel - a sporting good company based in Germany. In his free time, Henning is a passionate art collector who not only travels internationally for business but also has a deep personal interest in foreign cultures. As an enthusiastic amateur scuba diver, he prefers to spend his free time exploring the depths of the oceans.

Lars Hinrichs

Founder & Managing Director, Xing

Lars Hinrichs (32) founded the Company Cinco Capital GmbH, an independent investment company headquartered in Hamburg, Germany, in 2003 and is managing the Company as CEO. Cinco Capital is building a portfolio of holdings in private companies. Currently Cinco Capital holds investments in Europe and the U.S. in different industries such as technology, financial services, telecommunications, wholesale, marketing, media and others. 

In 2003 Lars Hinrichs founded the business networking platform XING and managed the Company as CEO up until January 2009. In December 2006 he oversaw the IPO of the Company, making XING AG the world’s first Web 2.0 company to go public. Lars Hinrichs became a Member of the Supervisory Board as planned at the beginning of 2009 in order to focus his efforts on new entrepreneurial enterprises in future. 

Mr. Hinrichs began his career as an entrepreneur in 1998 at the age of 22, after working as a consultant for several new media firms. In 1998, Hinrichs founded politik-digital.de, an award-winning platform for politics and new media. Two years later, he and a partner started Boettcher Hinrichs AG. From 2001 onwards, he shifted his focus towards investment and funding consulting, and successfully negotiated several rounds of financing for various enterprises. 

His broad spectrum of activities and high-level memberships in professional organizations such as the Entrepreneurs Organization have helped Lars Hinrichs establish an outstanding network of contacts worldwide. In 2008 he became a member of the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader

Lord Clive Hollick

Partner, GP Bullhound

Lord (Clive) Hollick was appointed a Partner of GP Bullhound in 2010. Lord Hollick is currently a director of ProSiebenSat.1, Honeywell International Inc, BMG Music Rights Management ag and senior director at Diageo plc. Previously, he was a partner at KKR where he headed the Media industry team in Europe, served as Chairman of SBS Broadcasting and a director of The Nielsen Company (formerly VNU Group). He was CEO of United Business Media, an international publishing, information, broadcasting and market research group. He began his career as an investment banker with Hambros and then built up a global money and securities broking business that subsequently became ICAP plc. He has also held positions as a director of Logica, Havas, TRW and BAe Systems and was Chairman of the South Bank Centre, Europe's largest arts centre. He founded the IPPR think-tank in 1986 and became a member of the House of Lords in 1991. He holds a B.A. and Doctorate from Nottingham University

Måns Hultman

Former CEO and Chairman, Qlik Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: QLIK)

 

Måns Hultman was CEO of Qlik between 2000 and 2007, and Chairman between 2004 and 2010, and led the transformation from small Swedish start-up to global Enterprise Software company. Qlik became one of the fastest growing SW companies on the planet during his last three years as CEO, growing at an average speed of 80% annually between 2005 and 2007. Qlik is headquartered in the US and became listed on NASDAQ in 2010.

Måns has worked in the IT Industry since 1982. He is now active as an investor in the tech sector.

 

 

Rob Jonas

Vice President and Managing Director, Europe and Middle East, InMobi

Rob Jonas is Vice President and Managing Director, Europe and Middle East, InMobi, which is the world's leading independent mobile advertising network. In September 2011, InMobi managed more than 50 billion ad requests in 160 countries around the world. InMobi is backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sherpalo ventures and recently closed a $200 million Series C round of investment from Softbank. He is an EMEA Board Member of both the Mobile Marketing Association and the Mobile Entertainment Forum, an advisor and Non-Executive Director of several early stage mobile startups and an active contributor to the European venture network Seedcamp.

Rob joined InMobi in December 2009 as the first hire in Europe, with overall responsibility for building the business in the region. He brings deep experience of launching, building and scaling digital advertising businesses in Europe. Rob joined InMobi from Google, where he was Director of Strategic Partnerships for Europe, Middle East and Africa, with responsibility for some of Google's largest commercial relationships in the region. Prior to Google, he was part of Yahoo! Europe, having joined through the acquisition of Overture Europe (formerly GoTo.com), which was acquired by Yahoo! in October 2003 for $1.6 billion. As an early employee of Overture Europe he was a key member of the European management team, contributing to the growth of the paid search industry in more than 13 markets in Europe over 2 years. Before Overture, he was an Executive Producer and founding team member of the European office of Bill Gross' idealab!, which facilitated both US companies' entry in Europe and executed local investments. Rob is a graduate of Oxford University in the UK and started his career in systems engineering and consulting at IBM Global Services in Europe and the US.

 

Manish Madhvani

Founding Partner, GP Bullhound

Manish is one of the Founding Partners of GP Bullhound. Since 1997 he has executed M&A and capital raising transactions involving some of the best known global internet, technology and media companies including: Sony, The Telegraph, WPP, Concentrix, Figleaves, Flirtomatic, Euroffice, eCommera, Handbag, Hearst Corporation, Newscorp and Private Outlet. Manish is currently Chairman of the Investor Allstars and Media Momentum judging panels and is on the board of Private Outlet a Pan European fast growing online fashion company. He is a regular speaker / panellist at conferences including Digital Hollywood, The Global E-commerce Summit, TiE, Internet World, Red Herring, White Bull, BVCA and EVCA. Manish started his career at Barclays Capital's Private Equity team, investing up to $200m in fast growing Technology and Media companies. Manish who has advised the Treasury on Entrepreneurship and was short listed for business person of the year at the KPMG Awards, graduated from Southampton University with an LLB in Law / MA in Marketing.

 

Siobhan McElhinney

Head of Corporate, Kemp Little

Siobhan heads up the Corporate team at the leading TMT law firm Kemp Little LLP.  Kemp Little is recognised as an outstanding technology, digital media and telecoms specialist law firm. It provides cutting-edge and effective legal advice to businesses that sell, buy or rely on technology, media and communications – helping businesses to innovate and succeed. Siobhan acts for a wide variety of businesses particularly US corporates on their European acquisitions, management teams on VC/PE fundraisings and exits and for investors in technology rich companies. Siobhan is recommended in Legal 500 for M&A and is described as " quick, responsive and intelligent” and is also recommended in their Venture Capital section.

 

Marcus Polke

Investment Director, Acton Capital Partners

Marcus Polke has been an Investment Director at venture capital firm Acton Capital Partners since its inception. Having worked in the Internet industry since the late nineties, he contributes in-depth operational expertise in the online and particularly e-commerce business to the Acton team.

In September 2007, Marcus joined Burda Digital Ventures (BDV) - the corporate venture team at global media company Hubert Burda Media, who were to found Acton Capital Partners soon after. He had already worked closely with the BDV team as a Managing Director of BDV's portfolio company AbeBooks Europe (2005-2007), which was later sold to Amazon. AbeBooks is the world's largest online marketplace for used and out-of-print books.

Prior to that, he led all e-commerce activities at AOL Germany between 2001 and 2005. From 1998-2001, Marcus was one of Amazon.de's first employees, building up product management and leading two product lines. He started his career at German media company Axel Springer after obtaining a degree in Economics and Management at the Technical University of Berlin and completing a banking apprenticeship at Berliner Bank AG.

 

Mark Read

Director of Strategy, CEO, WPP Digital

Mark Read is WPP’s Director of Strategy and CEO of WPP Digital.  He is also a member of the Board of WPP.  Since taking on the global role of Director of Strategy at the company in 2002, Mark has worked on WPP’s strategy, strengthening relationships with major clients and co-ordinating the activities of WPP operating companies.

 

Mark worked at WPP between 1989 and 1995 at the parent company and also at Ogilvy & Mather and Hill & Knowlton in London.  Prior to rejoining WPP in 2002, he was a Principal at the consultancy firm of Booz-Allen & Hamilton where he worked in the media and marketing areas for clients such as Universal, Viacom and the BBC.  He subsequently founded and developed the company WebRewards in the UK prior to its acquisition by Bertelsmann AG.

 

He has a degree in Economics from Cambridge University, was a Henry Fellow at Harvard University and has an MBA from INSEAD.

Mike Reid

Managing Director,Frog Capital

Mike is Managing Partner of Frog Capital, a European fund actively looking for investments in the Digital Media industry. In his early career, Mike managed various operational business units within British Gas before spending twelve years at 3i as a venture and growth equity investor. At 3i, he worked at board level with many successful companies, amongst them Magic4 (sold to Openwave), Marlborough Stirling (LSE IPO), Adaytum Software (acquired by Cognos), Instone International, Connectivity, SBL Vaccine (acquired by Crucell) and Q-Matic (acquired by Altor).

Per Roman

Founding Partner, GP Bullhound

Per Roman is one of the Founding Partners of GP Bullhound. Per has completed trade sale and fund raising transactions and hasmade investments in and for European technology and Internet companies for well over a decade. He appears as a regular technology commentator at industry conferences such as Red Herring, Next10, SIME and EVCA as well as on channels such as CNN, CNBC Europe, BBC World and Bloomberg TV. He started his banking career at Lehman Brothers Inc., focused on technology M&A and equity capital market transactions. Per also has experience from the software industry where he held roles in Europe and the US for Autodesk, Inc. Per graduated from Stockholm School of Economics and holds a MSc in Finance.

Mark Sebba

Chief Executive, NET-A-PORTER.COM

NET-A-PORTER.COM is the world's leading fashion website, being the first e-tailer to demonstrate digital convergence in action, combining a fashion magazine with original weekly content emailed to one and a half million women across the globe, with retail sales of the latest designer fashion offerings.

In 2009, NET-A-PORTER launched theOutnet.com which has quickly established itself as the chic, go-to destination for the global, style-conscious shopper looking for the best designer brands at a great price and in 2011, the company will launch MrPorter.com , the men's style destination.

Mark Sebba joined NET-A-PORTER in 2003, to help take the business from successful start-up to a mature expanding business with a substantial infrastructure. Mark's background is in finance both as an investment banker and as finance director of two venture capital funded businesses in new media. He is a non-executive director of LMS Capital plc.

In the last six years, sales have grown from £6 million to £150 million, employees from 40 to 850 covering two continents; space occupied has grown from 15,000 sq ft to some 500,000 sq ft and the company was recently acquired by Richemont International for £350 million.