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 United Kingdom based General Partner operating in the FinTech space. If you think a General 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.
Hans Otterling
General Partner of Northzone
Hans Otterling joined Northzone in 2006. His primary areas of focus are e-commerce, fintech, internet security, enterprise software and related SaaS models. His portfolio includes Tobii, Klarna, HappyOrNot, Footway, Fishbrain,and Outfittery. Hans holds an MBA from Stockholm School of Economics and University of Massachusetts (Fulbright scholar). Hans Otterling is an enthusiastic participant in all discussions about the secrets of successful serial entrepreneurship. Having started, grown, and sold several market leading companies, he has learnt a thing or two along the way. He revolutionised the field of Investor Relations, through founding Waymaker, an early internet-based information distribution company. Where listed Swedish companies had previously employed the services of taxis in order to get their financial reports to the media, Waymaker built a completely new network.
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About Northzone: Northzone is an early-stage venture capital fund built on experience spanning multiple economic and disruptive technology cycles.
Jeppe Zink
General Partner of Northzone
Jeppe joined Northzone in 2012. His primary areas of focus are fintech and SaaS businesses. His portfolio includes Trustpilot, Zopa, Wallapop, MarketInvoice, Nested, TrueLayer, Cornerjob, Anyfin, and CrossLend. Jeppe has over the years also invested in companies including Space Ape Games (exited to Supercell), EpiServer (exited to IK Investment Partners), Tobii (IPO), End2End (exited to MACH), Cocom (exit to Cisco) and Nomad (exited to Alstom). A Dane by birth, Jeppe was educated in Germany and England. His formative career years were spent at Deutsche Bank, focusing on mergers and acquisitions. A crash course in principal investing followed as Jeppe was part of the founding team setting up a venture capital fund with the bank as investor. There, Jeppe got to see the inside of the crazy ups and downs of the technology boom and bust first hand, including the successful investment and subsequent exit in Cocom, founded by previous Northzone Partner Gregers Kronborg. When DB Capital was spun out, Jeppe joined Amadeus Capital. Here, he worked through the ranks and made it to Partner with a specific focus on the Nordics. Jeppe co-invested with Northzone in several companies, including Tobii and EpiServer. Since joining Northzone, Jeppe has opened up the international investment activities of the firm, while leading the thinking on Northzone’s fintech investment strategy, alongside other categories.
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About Northzone, TrueLayer: Northzone is an early-stage venture capital fund built on experience spanning multiple economic and disruptive technology cycles.
Jos White
General Partner of Notion Capital
Jos is an entrepreneur turned investor. He is currently a Partner at Notion Capital. Notion Capital is based in London and focuses on B2B SaaS/Cloud Services in the European market. Notion portfolio Companies that Jos has invested in include Avrios, CurrencyCloud, Idio, FiveAI, Futrli, Mews, Shutl (sold to eBay), Topia, Trustev (sold to Transunion). Prior to Notion, Jos co-founded three businesses – RBR Networks (sold to Datatec for $60m), Star (sold to Claranet for $88m) and MessageLabs (sold to Symantec for $700m). MessageLabs was one of the first and also, at the time of its sale, one of the largest software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies in the world and a trailblazer for the overall market. Jos is a well-known entrepreneur and investor in the UK and the US. He has spoken at numerous industry events including The Entrepreneurs Summit and the LBS Entrepreneurs Speaker Series and appeared on both TV and radio including BBC, CNBC, NBC, Sky and ITV. Jos received a BA honours degree in English Literature from London University and divides his time between New York and London.
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About Justworks, Notion Capital: Notion is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on technology and cloud computing markets.
Chris Tottman
General Partner of Notion Capital
Chris Tottman is a founding partner at Notion Capital and, together with his general fund responsibilities, specialises in sales and HR strategy within portfolio companies. Chris joined MessageLabs Group in 1999 as one of its first employees and has had a number of executive level roles both within MessageLabs and Star, its sister company. Chris joined as Chief Commercial Officer where his responsibilities covered sales strategy for both Star and MessageLabs overseeing a period of fantastic growth for the group in terms of both revenues and employees. Between 2004-05 Chris was appointed as the interim CEO of Star.
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About Notion Capital: Notion is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on technology and cloud computing markets.
Haakon Overli
Co-Founder and General Partner of Dawn Capital
Haakon started Dawn Capital with Norman Fiore in 2007. He has extensive investing, operational and venture capital experience. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded Self Trade – an online sharedealing platform – and acted as the CEO for the highly successful British part of the business and was a member of their European Executive Board. Self Trade was floated in April 2000 and then sold in October 2000 to DAB (a subsidiary of HVB of Germany) for €911M. Haakon has served on the boards of Self Trade and Wonga.com amongst others, and currently represents Dawn’s interest at Conversocial, Crate.io, LeadDesk, Minute Media and Neo Technologies. Prior to formalising early stage investing at Dawn, Haakon worked with early stage companies from their first commercial efforts through to managing accelerated growth, often by serving as an interim manager or board member. They include G-Cluster (sold to Softbank Broadmedia) and Lateral Logic (sold to Electronic Arts). Mr. Overli studied Mathematics at the University of Oslo and holds a B.A. (Hons) in Economics from University of Durham. In his investment-banking career when the world was covered in ice, Haakon was a Director and Co-Head of Technology Investment Banking at ING Barings. Prior even to that, Haakon worked for JP Morgan in the M&A departments of New York and London.
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About Dawn Capital: Dawn Capital is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on investing in the enterprise software and FinTech sectors.
Josh Bell
General Partner of Dawn Capital
Josh Bell is an Associate Partner and Head of Financial Services at Dawn Capital. Prior to Dawn, Josh worked with McKinsey & Company, managing teams that advised boards of Fortune global 500 financial institutions based in London, Geneva, Amsterdam and New York. Over the past 5 years, Josh has developed strong working relationships with many of the key senior executives, particularly in Europe. Josh has in particular extensive experience working with clients in private equity, corporate finance and retail strategy. Most recently, Josh was recognised within the firm as a leading financial services expert in Europe. Within his retail and wholesale banking work, Josh devoted significant time to informing clients on the impact of new technologies on their industries, and helping to assess and implement these technologies for their businesses. In addition to his private sector client work, Josh was also integral to supporting McKinsey’s relationship with the World Economic Forum, leading McKinsey support for the WEF’s financial services knowledge initiatives and activities, principally for the Davos conferences in 2006 and 2007. Prior to McKinsey, Josh served in 2002 as an external, independent consultant to Lloyd’s of London, leading their risk analysis, market segmentation and phasing for their online risk management exchange. Josh was a Graduate Scholar at Oxford University in Mathematics. He was subsequently a Research Fellow at Harvard University in Economics and Game Theory, publishing papers in Game Theory and IT Security journals before studying operational research and advanced financial modelling at Cambridge University, as part of an MPhil in Statistics; his MPhil research was supported by the Rand Institute of Santa Monica, California.
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About Dawn Capital, Haversack: Dawn Capital is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on investing in the enterprise software and FinTech sectors.
Norman Fiore
Co-Founder and General Partner of Dawn Capital
Norman co-founded Dawn Capital in 2007. Since that time he has invested in several of Europe’s leading SaaS businesses including Mimecast [MIME], Collibra, Showpad and Automile and in B2B/B2C e-commerce business Gelato. Prior to Dawn, Norman was Partner at the Reuters Greenhouse Fund, Reuters Plc’s global technology VC fund. At Reuters, Norman co-managed one of the largest corporate technology funds that invested over $450M in over 80 early, mid and late stage companies globally. In 2001, Norman and his fellow partners acquired the Greenhouse Fund and subsequently sold companies in the online media/advertising sector (Advertising.com (to AOL), Forbes.com (to PE buyer), Bitpipe (to TechTarget), Moreover (to VeriSign)), internet services (WhereOnEarth (to Yahoo), UltraDNS (to NeuStar), Radialpoint (to TA), Investis (to PE buyer)) and software (Packetvideo (to NextWave), ID2 (to Sonera), Metamerge (to IBM), Persistence (Nasdaq IPO, now PRGS). Prior to Reuters, Norman worked at Bain & Company in London, initially in the Telecoms practice and then the Private Equity group. Norman is a graduate of Stanford University with dual BS and BA degrees in Engineering and Economics and holds an MBA with distinction from INSEAD business school.
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About Bain & Company, Dawn Capital: Dawn Capital is an early-stage venture fund that focuses on investing in the enterprise software and FinTech sectors.
Laurence Garrett
General Partner of Highland Europe
As a co-founder and General Partner of the Highland Europe Fund, Laurence primarily focuses on growth opportunities in the information technology sector for the European market. Prior to joining Highland Capital Partners in 2012 as a General Partner to launch their London Operations, Laurence was a Partner and founding member of Ethean Capital LLP.
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About Highland Capital Partners, Highland Europe, Hyperexponential, LoveCrafts, Modulr, StarLeaf: Highland Europe is a growth-stage technology fund that invests in European internet, mobile, and software companies.
Jean Tardy-Joubert
General Partner of Highland Europe
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About Condeco, Highland Europe, Talentsoft, YOOBIC: Highland Europe is a growth-stage technology fund that invests in European internet, mobile, and software companies.
Javier Santiso
Founder & General Partner of Alma Mundi Ventures
Javier Santiso is the managing director of global affairs and new ventures at [Telefonica](https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/telefonica), a diversified telecommunications group that provides fixed line and mobile telephony services. He currently resides in Madrid, Spain.
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About Alma Mundi Ventures, Start Up Spain, Telefonica: Alma Mundi Ventures is a venture capital firm that funds primarily technology-based companies with B2B and B2B2C business models.
Ekaterina Almasque
General Partner of OpenOcean
Ekaterina (Katya) Almasque is a Venture Partner at OpenOcean and she leads the London Team and Operations. Before joining OpenOcean, Katya was a Managing Director of the Samsung Catalyst Fund in Europe, Samsung’s Electronics $500M venture capital multistage investment fund focused on core technology areas including robotics, autonomous driving, artificial intelligence, digital health, data infrastructure and device level technologies. She led investments across Europe in leading companies such as GraphCore, Mapillary, AIMotive, Sentiance and Quobyte, as well as several venture funds. For over ten years prior to that, Katya was part of several corporate and independent venture capital funds in Silicon Valley and Europe, including EMC and Siemens Venture Capital. Additionally she was a founding partner of a global private equity advisory firm specializing in high-tech growth companies with $1B+ markets in the technology and environmental sectors, where she led investments in the US, Brazil, and Europe.
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About Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), OpenOcean, Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center: OpenOcean is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in B2B software across Europe.
Nicholas Stocks
General Partner of White Star Capital
Nicholas has experience as an entrepreneur, operator, advisor and investor. Previously, he founded he worked for Global Founders Capital, the $1bn sector agonstic global fund, and was an early member of the team at UKCloud (formerly known as Skyscape). He has also worked for Access Industries-owned AINMT in Brazil, PT in Lisbon, and was an investment banker at UBS in London. Nicholas holds an MBA from London Business School.
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About White Star Capital: White Star Capital is an international venture and early growth-stage investment platform in technology.
Nick Stocks
General Partner of White Star Capital
Nick is a General Partner at White Star Capital, leading the London office, investing in and working with entrepreneurs across Europe. He focuses on DTC, Marketplaces and SaaS and is on the boards of companies such as Clark, Butternut Box, and Red Sift.
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About White Star Capital: White Star Capital is an international venture and early growth-stage investment platform in technology.
Josep Santacana
General Partner of Nekko Capital
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About Nekko Capital: Nekko Capital manages venture capital funds targeting European digital transformation companies in early stage.
