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 London based Venture Partner operating in the FinTech space. If you think a Venture 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.
Marvin Ma
Venture Partner of Octopus Ventures
Marvin Ma joined as Octopus Venture Partner in March 2016. He is actively helping Octopus as well as its portfolios on China strategy and relationship building. Marvin is also Founder of Longhill Investments, an alternative investment firm based in Shanghai, helping Chinese institutions and family office for outbound investments and deal makings. Before that Marvin was a venture investor in HSBC Strategic Innovation Investment team covering Fintech Investments and ex Investment Banker in Torch Partners, a tech focus corporate finance advisory firm.
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About Octopus Ventures, Sumscope: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
Anthony Collinson
Venture Partner of Octopus Ventures
Anthony was a co-founder of Katalyst Ventures, which was launched in 2000. As Chairman of the company he helped build its private angel network to over 100 people, as well as raising over £18 million to fund a portfolio of 25 companies before Katalyst Ventures was sold to Octopus in 2007. Now a consultant, he acts as a director and observer to a number of investee companies within the team’s portfolio. He has a manufacturing, operational and general management background as well as extensive small business experience. He was a director of Porvair PLC and Managing Director of Porvair International Ltd. Previously Anthony was managing director of Scotfresh Limited, Irish Leathers Group Plc and Holmes Hall Tanners Limited.
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About Octopus Ventures: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
Tim Lebus
Venture Partner of Octopus Ventures
Tim Lebus has spent over 30 years in private equity and banking. He is currently Senior Adviser to Duke Street, the mid-market private equity group, having previously been a Partner from 2001 to 2012. Prior to joining Duke Street, Tim worked for more than 20 years as an investment banker, most recently as a Managing Director in the Financial Sponsor group at Deutsche Bank. He also works with Octopus Ventures, the venture capital arm of Octopus Investments. He is as an observer to a number of Octopus Ventures investee companies and is a director of Octopus Titan VCT 3 plc. In addition, he is a director of Bibby Line Group Limited. Tim qualified a lawyer and practised as a barrister in London and subsequently as a corporate lawyer in New York. He holds a degree in law from Cambridge University.
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About Octopus Ventures: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
George Whitehead
Venture Partner Manager of Octopus Ventures
Partner at ACF Investors.
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About ACF Investors, Clean Growth Fund, Octopus Ventures: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
Philip Lay
Venture Partner of Octopus Ventures
Philip has been a partner at the Chasm Group, a Silicon Valley based strategy consulting firm founded by Geoffrey Moore, for the past 24 years. He joined Octopus Ventures as a Venture Partner in January 2018, after moving from San Francisco back to the UK. Earlier Philip had a successful entrepreneurial career, co-founding and leading a successful security and communications software company, TGR Software, before it was acquired, and before that he was a sales executive at IBM in the UK. Philip focuses mainly on B2B software/Saas. He has advised dozens of companies ranging from major tech companies such as Autodesk, HP, NetApp, Netsuite, SAP, Rackspace and Salesforce.com, to mid-sized players and startups entering their scale-up growth phase. Among the key themes of his work are: playing for power, land & expand business strategy and enterprise customer engagement. Philip has also delivered keynotes and moderated panels at industry and company conferences around the world; he teaches full-time MBA students at IESE in Barcelona
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About Octopus Ventures: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
Ian Perry
Venture Partner of Octopus Ventures
Ian combines over 25 years sales, operations and general management experience in the IT industry with domain experience in the communications industry spanning wireline, wireless and IP service provider markets. Following consistent success in sales and sales management positions at Information Technology Ltd, Ingres and Sybase, Ian went on to join Portal Software as Vice President, EMEA in 1998. Building the EMEA organization from scratch his four year tenure at Portal Software saw the company rapidly achieve a dominant market position in convergent billing and customer care solutions securing the majority of Tier 1 operators across EMEA, and supported a highly successful NASDAQ IPO. Since leaving Portal in 2002, Ian operates an independent consulting business active in supporting and investing in early stage organizations spanning SaaS, direct / enterprise, channel and consumer business models. Ian currently holds non-executive board positions at Cloudmark Inc, Eseye Ltd, Central Europe On-Demand Zrt and Ontology Ltd.
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About Octopus Ventures: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
Alan Cairns
Venture Partner of Octopus Ventures
Alan, who joined Octopus Ventures in 2018, is a Venture Partner focussing on People & Talent Strategies across the portfolio. He’s a seasoned digital/tech focussed chief people officer having spent 8 years helping take MoneySupermarket from IPO, through a range of acquisitions including the substantive Moneysavingexpert, to a FTSE 150 with a £2Billion Enterprise value. He hired the executive team including CEO, several NED’s and the leadership team as well as building out the people strategy. He’s spent the past two years as CPO of MOO where he made some significant exec hires, codefied it’s culture and values as well as launching an all employee stock option plan. Alan is currently CPO for a systematic hedge fund, a proud mentor for ALT and an advisor to a nascent startup in psychometrics.
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About Octopus Ventures: Octopus is a multi stage European venture capital investor specializing in health, money, deep tech, and consumer.
David Lofthouse
Venture Partner of Clocktower Technology Ventures
David is London-based Venture Partner, leading Clocktower Technology Ventures in the UK and Europe. He is responsible for all fintech investment activity, including originations, investment execution and portfolio management in this region. David was previously Co-Founder and CIO of Prologue Capital, a highly successful fixed income global macro hedge fund. David’s earlier career in trading spans JP Morgan, Greenwich Capital and Goldman Sachs. David holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham. David lives in Mayfair with his wife and young child.
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About Clocktower Technology Ventures: Clocktower Technology Ventures invests in the insurance, payments, personal finance, lending, credit, and asset management sectors.
Ameya Upadhyay
Venture Partner of Flourish Ventures
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About Flourish Ventures: Flourish is a global venture capital firm focused on early-stage Fintech investments that enhance financial health.
