Best Startup
At Best Startup UK we track over 130,000 UK startups and over 500,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top Edinburgh based Partner operating in the Financial Services space. If you think a Partner is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on editor@beststartup.co.uk.
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Companies House UK, Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Andrew Castell
Partner of Par Equity
Andrew is a Chartered Accountant and has a MA in Jurisprudence from Oxford University. His career prior to Par Equity took in corporate finance and restructuring as well as serving at PLC board level. Within Par Equity, Andrew is responsible for a range of disciplines including regulatory matters, finance, fund structuring and investment and exit execution.
Follow Andrew Castell:
About Par Equity: Par Equity is a leading, early-stage venture capital firm, investing in innovative, high growth technology companies.
Robert Higginson
Partner of Par Equity
Robert spent the early part of his career as a software engineer for a start-up based in the U.S before moving into broader technology, product management and strategy roles within the financial services sector. Latterly he has operated as an investor on his own account before assuming his main role as Par Equity’s Gatekeeper where he is responsible for assessing inbound investment opportunities.
Follow Robert Higginson:
About Par Equity: Par Equity is a leading, early-stage venture capital firm, investing in innovative, high growth technology companies.
Paul Atkinson
Partner of Par Equity
Paul is an entrepreneur and serial angel investor having started three businesses prior to Par Equity. He has a substantial track record of building value for companies in the technology and services sector and taking them to a successful exit. He has a BSc in Physics from Manchester University. Paul’s responsibilities within Par Equity include business development and helping portfolio companies access the right people in Par Equity’s network to support them in delivering growth. He also oversees Par Equity’s forestry activities.
Follow Paul Atkinson:
About Par Equity: Par Equity is a leading, early-stage venture capital firm, investing in innovative, high growth technology companies.
Paul Munn
Partner of Par Equity
Paul is a Chartered Management Accountant and has experience of corporate management, turnarounds, business development and active share owner engagement. He has a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Glasgow. Within Par Equity, Paul works closely with portfolio companies on a wide range of operational and growth challenges as well as being responsible for Par Equity’s property funds.
Follow Paul Munn:
About Par Equity: Par Equity is a leading, early-stage venture capital firm, investing in innovative, high growth technology companies.
Tom Slater
Partner of Baillie Gifford
Follow Tom Slater:
About Baillie Gifford: Baillie Gifford is an independently owned firm that focuses on investment and asset management.
David Milroy
Partner of Maven Capital Partners
Based in our Edinburgh office, David is responsible for new Private Equity investments in Scotland and also supports a number of companies in the Maven portfolio. He started his career as a scientist with GlaxoSmithKline and then as a clinical pharmacist at Guy’s/St Thomas’ hospitals, London. After completing his PhD, he moved to international consultancy firm Wood Mackenzie (and then parent Deutsche Bank) where he supported the healthcare banking team, advising clients on their corporate and licensing strategies and performing due diligence projects on companies, products and technologies. Most recently at ITI Life Sciences, a unique state-supported innovation fund, David was responsible for identifying funding opportunities and crafting these into significant collaborative R&D programmes. David joined Aberdeen Asset Management in September 2007, as Fund Manager for the White Rose Technology Seedcorn Fund, an early stage seed fund investing in new technology emerging from the universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York. David has a First Class Honours degree in Pharmacy, a PhD (Molecular Biology/Gene Delivery) from the University of Bath and a MBA with distinction from Edinburgh University.
Follow David Milroy:
About Maven Capital Partners: Maven Capital Partners is a private equity firm that provides a range of funding options to SMEs and investment opportunities.
Sandy McKinnon
Partner of Pentech Ventures
Sandy has been a Pentech partner since 2001. His areas of interest include security technology, the applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and new infrastructure technologies such as blockchain and microservices. He has led investments in edge-caching company Velocix (sold to Alcatel-Lucent), predictive analytics company SeeWhy (sold to SAP), machine-learning computer-vision company Omniperception (sold to Digital Barriers), audio effects company Sonaptic (sold to Wolfson) and real-time big data analytics company Acunu (sold to Apple). Sandy has also been deeply involved in commercialising technology from Universities for most of his life and still helps Old College Capital at Edinburgh University. He has recently been involved with setting up and making operational techstartNI, helping the team there deliver a micro-seed fund for Northern Ireland. Sandy had a Research Fellowship at Cambridge University, working in Nanotechnology with many of the pioneers in the field. He has a Ph.D. and B.Sc.(first) in Physics from the University of Dundee.
Follow Sandy McKinnon:
About Pentech Ventures: Pentech Ventures is a venture capital fund focused on finding category defining software companies.
Craig Anderson
Partner of Pentech Ventures
Follow Craig Anderson:
About Nutmeg, Pentech Ventures, PrimaryBid, TravelNest, Vauban: Pentech Ventures is a venture capital fund focused on finding category defining software companies.
Marc Moens
Partner of Pentech Ventures
Marc has been a Pentech partner since 2008. His areas of interest include companies that make use of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence, companies that build solutions focused on marketing optimisation, and companies that grow through network effects. He has led investments in targeted advertising company Struq (acquired by Quantcast), data and machine learning company Semetric (acquired by Apple), customer experience optimization specialist Maxymiser (acquired by Oracle), music streaming service We7 (acquired by Tesco) and daily fantasy sports company FanDuel. Marc has a PhD from the University of Edinburgh, where he ran a research group working in natural language processing. He left the University to co-found Rhetorical Systems, a text-to-speech company, and became its CEO. In 2001, Pentech became one of Rhetorical’s investors. Rhetorical soon became a market leader in high-quality text-to-speech, with sales across Europe and the US. In December 2004 Rhetorical was sold to a US-based speech company.
Follow Marc Moens:
About Pentech Ventures: Pentech Ventures is a venture capital fund focused on finding category defining software companies.
Colin Slater
Partner of PwC
Colin is a Cyber security Partner in our Cyber Threat Operations function in the UK leading the build out of our Managed Detection and Response service. Colin has a diverse technology & business background including the establishment of several startups including a large security managed service (DMZGlobal) which was sold to Telstra in 2005. Prior to this Colin has worked in software development in the oil & gas sector, established a computer forensics and investigations business and spent time previously working for PwC on the electronic land titles system in New Zealand. Colin founded another company in 2005 which was acquired by PwC in 2011 and formed the nucleus of the Cyber centre of excellence.
Follow Colin Slater:
About PwC: PricewaterhouseCoopers is an accounting firm that provides tax, HR, transactions, performance improvement, and crisis management services.
Steve Davies
Partner of PwC
Follow Steve Davies:
About PwC: PricewaterhouseCoopers is an accounting firm that provides tax, HR, transactions, performance improvement, and crisis management services.
Stewart Langdon
Partner of LeapFrog Investments
Stewart Langdon focuses on investments in LeapFrog’s priority markets in South Asia. He co-led LeapFrog’s landmark investments in Shriram, Mahindra and BIMA. Stewart has 13 years of experience in investment banking, corporate finance and private equity. Prior to joining LeapFrog, he worked at Rothschild for 6 years in London and Dubai. He specialised in the telecoms, banking and insurance sectors and worked throughout the Middle East, Africa and Asia. His experience on high profile transactions includes mergers, acquisitions, disposals, IPOs, debt raisings and restructurings. Stewart is a Chartered Accountant and chairs the Asia Scotland Institute’s Business Advisory Council.
Follow Stewart Langdon:
About LeapFrog Investments: LeapFrog Investments is a private equity investment company.
Mark Hogarth
Partner of Techstart Ventures
Mark Hogarth is the Investment Director who leads the sourcing and negotiation of investments and disposals. Mark sits on the board of Sigma Capital Group plc and Sigma Technology Management Limited, as well as the boards of a number of Sigma’s portfolio companies, and has worked on more than 80 transactions with an aggregate value of more than £100m since joining Sigma in 2002. Mark’s previous employers include Arthur Andersen Business Consulting where he worked with a range of blue chip clients on a variety of technical and strategic projects. Mark has a MEng in Manufacturing Science and Engineering and is an approved person under the Financial Services and Markets Act.
Follow Mark Hogarth:
About Exterity, Techstart Ventures: Techstart Ventures is a leading investor of seed capital across Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Hamish Webb
Partner of TerraProtein Equity Partners
Follow Hamish Webb:
About TerraProtein Equity Partners: TerraProtein Equity Partners is a corporate finance firm.
Andrew Shannon
Co-Founding Partner, Head of Compliance, and Investment Committee Member of Circularity Capital
Andrew joined Foresight’s private equity team from UBS, where Andrew was part of the utilities advisory team. Prior to UBS, Andrew worked for Societe Generale both in London and New York in the M&A and Leverage finance teams. Within the portfolio Andrew serves on the boards of engineering business Aquasium, support services business ICA and software business Vector Command. Andrew holds a MA in Economics from Cambridge University and a BSc in Technology & Business Studies from the Robert Gordon University.
Follow Andrew Shannon:
About Circularity Capital: Circularity Capital is a specialist private equity firm investing in European growth SMEs operating in the circular economy.
