Awards Judges
Fred Soneya
Co-Founder & Partner - Haatch
As co-founder of Haatch, Fred leads the firm’s day-to-day operations and investment team. Since 2013, he has overseen over 150 investments into 70+ companies and onboarded 600+ investors into Haatch’s funds.
Previously, Fred spearheaded high-profile innovation projects at Kiddicare.com and Morrisons supermarket, creating award-winning digital experiences. At Morrisons, he launched browse-and-order points at 300+ stores, mobile payments scaling to hundreds of millions in revenue, and digital shelf labels – establishing Morrisons as a leader in tech-forward retail.
Oliver Hammond
Partner - Fuel Ventures
Oli is a Partner at Fuel Ventures, one of the UK’s most active pre-seed and seed funds. Fuel invests into marketplaces, platforms and SaaS model businesses both B2B and B2C and has made over 170 investments since it began in 2016
Margaret Anne Coyle
Co-Founder & CEO - Hotbed
After working on the programs team at TechHub, Margaret co-founded her first company, Spice Startups, right after finishing university. With over 5 years of experience in the London startup ecosystem, she’s worked with 2,500+ startups.
Ed Stevenson
Investment Executive - SFC Capital
Edward joined SFC Capital in 2019 after attaining a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of Manchester and performing a variety of roles across several organisations. Prior to joining the SFC team, he worked in financial analysis and consulting as well as spending some time at FinTech Startup. Working as an Investment Executive, he is responsible for the screening and selection of the best investment opportunities.
Olivia Sibony
Co-founder - Impact Amplified
Olivia (Liv) Sibony is an award-winning entrepreneur and trailblazing ethical investment champion. She co-founded Impact Amplified, where she works with industry experts, entrepreneurs and academics to help leaders make a positive impact through business.
Roderick Beer
Managing Director - UKBAA
Roderick’s career spans over 17 years of managing, founding and growing angel
groups and investment platforms that have collectively deployed over £100m of equity investment in more than 500 startup and scaleup businesses. He started at Beer & Partners, the first and largest angel group in the UK which later sold to Risk Capital Partners, he later helped form and grow a successful corporate finance firm, as their COO. He is now the Managing Director of the UK Business Angels Association, the trade body for angel and early-stage investing, representing 220 organisations including over 100 Angel Groups that collectively deploy over £2bn p.a. in innovative, high-growth businesses.
Marc Cohen
Sole Partner - Unbundled VC
Marc at Unbundled VC brings a founder mindset to venture capital. He invests primarily in early-stage digital tech businesses. Marc studied AI in 2001 under one of Geoffrey Hinton’s mentors and later co-produced what was then the world’s top poker AI. Notable investments include Capdesk, acquired by unicorn Carta; Runna, one of Europe’s fastest growing companies; and Magrathea, backed by high-profile US investors including Sam Altman of OpenAI.
Katie Ramsey
Angel Investor & Head of FinTech at DBT for His Majesty's Government
Katie is the Head of FinTech at DBT for His Majesty’s Government, Co-Founder of The Power Collective and angel investor. Shortlisted for Angel of the Year 2024, she invests across fintech, Al, wellness, loT, robotics and feminine health markets and is on the Board of Zeed Al, one of the UK’s fastest growing fintechs. A former fund manager and algorithmic trader, Katie is twice winner of Financial News’ Top 40 Under 40, UN Women UK Delegate, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader nominee, Computer Weekly’s Most Influential Tech Leaders nominee and named in Innovate Finance’s FinTech Power List of Senior Leaders. She ran ETF Product Distribution at BlackRock, co-managed Vanguard’s flagship LifeStrategy funds and managed the Middle East region for Macquarie’s Securities business.
Jonny Clark
Angel Investor & Interim CEO - Capital Enterprise
Jonny Clark is currently the Interim CEO of Capital Enterprise, a leading not-for-profit startup support and ecosystem development organisation. His background includes experience as a founder and angel investor, coming from a background in technology policy and economic development. He has worked alongside senior politicians and bluechip industry leaders to drive forward technology entrepreneurship in the UK. He has backed category-defining SaaS businesses throughout the entirety of the UK, and served on a range of boards and steering groups dedicated to advancing the tech economy in order to spread wealth and improve people’s lives.
Eva Dobrzanska
Angel Investor & Co-Founder - Fundraising Playbooks
Eva Dobrzanska (fundraisingplaybooks.com) helps startup founders reach more investors with step-by-step strategies that real-life founders have used to raise millions. Her playbooks secured a VC reply within 20 minutes of hitting ‘Send,’ a reply from Mark Cuban, a reply from Sequoia Capital in less than 24 hours, and a stellar 100% response rate within the first 4 hours of sending cold emails. Her masterclasses are regularly oversubscribed, with a record of 1k+ signups in July 2024.
Hugh Bartlett
Investment Principal - Green Angel Ventures
Hugh joined Green Angel Ventures in 2018 and heads their Deal Team. He specialises in late-stage due diligence, contract negotiation, and co-investor partnerships. Hugh supports their portfolio companies, sitting on multiple boards.
In 2021, Hugh was awarded the prestigious BusinessGreen Young Executive of the Year award for his achievements.
Ghita EL Haitmy
CEO & Co-Founder - Techbible
Ghita El Haitmy is the founder and Tech content creator at Techbible, an AI SaaS discovery platform that helps professionals discover new tools based on their job roles and industry and see experts’ tech stacks. As a creator led-startup, Techbible’s social channels gained over 160K on Instagram and 211K on Tiktok in 2024, and help individuals stay updated on the latest tech news, SaaS and AI tools so they stay ahead with all the development in tech and use them to their advantage to advance their careers or create new ventures. Ghita is a self taught coder and a top female voice in tech that has been featured on the Nasdaq board in Times Square snd BBC radio this year.
Engin Yenidunya
Investor & Founder - 21x21
Engin is the Founder of 21×21, an angel “cartel” of 21 lifelong friends spanning 13 countries. He previously served as CFO at MUBI after spending 18 years in global banking across New York, London, Hong Kong, and Tokyo. Engin has invested $1 billion of equity, underwritten $2.5 billion of debt, raised $55 million for startups, produced nine films, and ran a 3:54 marathon. A Yale graduate with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science, he loves numbers, scuba diving, football, and live music.
Jennifer Hoffman
Founder & CMO - Unstoppable
Jennifer has 20+ years as a Marketing leader and Startup Executive with a focus on B2B SaaS. Passionate about building and scaling, she has successfully developed startups, tech solutions, communities, and brands while fostering high-performing teams. Currently, Jennifer serves as a Fractional CMO and growth adviser for early-stage tech startups. She is also the Founder & CEO of Unstoppable, a movement dedicated to supporting female founders on their journey to building high-growth businesses by providing access to valuable resources, networks, and capital.
Surakat Kudehinbu
Senior Investment Executive - Green Angel Ventures
Surakat is a Senior Investment Executive at Green Angel Ventures – The reference investor for early-stage UK cleantech innovation A Petroleum and Mechanical Engineer, he was part of the founding team at RAB-Microfluidics (a real time oil condition monitoring technology company) where he was awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Fellowship to commercialise the technology. He has good international exposure having lived and worked in various countries in Europe, Africa and Australasia. He is passionate about new disruptive technologies and their use in making a positive impact on society.
Abhi Desai
Partner - Desi Ventures
Abhi Desai is a partner at Desi Ventures, a family office investing in early stage startups. The office is based in India and has been investing there sector agnostically for a decade. Abhi is based in London and focuses on climate tech. He invests in pre-seed and seed stage companies developing novel technologies to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions in Europe and the US.
Will Bennett
Investor - Seedcamp
Seedcamp is one of Europe’s oldest seed funds and has been the first money into businesses like Revolut, Wise, UiPath and Synthesia. Will is a member of the investment team working broadly across the European landscape after being on the early team at Fuse Energy in the UK which raised from Accel, Balderton, Creandum and others.
Richard Hoskins
Co-founder - Kin Group
Richard has worked in VC for nearly 20 years, with a focus on helping emerging managers raise funds. Initially this was as a placement agent, raising money for new managers from LPs. After getting increasingly frustrated with Fund Administrators he moved into providing fund administration services and building related technology. In 2018 he co-founded Kin Group, the UK’s one stop shop for Venture Capital managers. He has been described as one of the most knowledgeable commentators on UK Venture Capital (Telegraph 2017).
Emmie Faust
Founder - Female Founders Rise
Emmie is a mum of 4, a serial entrepreneur, investor, and champion of female founders. She leads Female Founders Rise, a thriving UK community of 8,000 women and non-binary entrepreneurs, and recently launched the Female Founders Directory to boost corporate spending with women-owned businesses.
Two decades ago, she secured a record £200K investment on Dragons’ Den from Theo Paphitis. Today, she’s a micro angel investor backing the next generation of female-led companies.
Shruti Iyengar
Investment Manager - Future Planet Capital
Shruti is an Investment Manager at Future Planet Capital, leading Space tech investments and co-founding Climate Mosaic, a community for underrepresented founders in climate tech. Previously, she was with Sustainable Ventures, managing a 36-company portfolio and leading an Accelerator programme. Shruti started her career in Singapore, building impact strategies and incubator programmes for early-stage companies. She holds a dual degree in Mathematics and Economics from Nanyang Technological University and is a Women’s Merit Scholar from London Business School.
Helen Chorley
Investor, Advisor & Co-Founder - Property Sisters UK
Helen Chorley, an angel investor on SkyTV’s Property Elevator, is a respected analyst with over 20 years in finance. She began at JPMorgan, later moving into real estate and venture capital, where she now mentors and invests in high-growth startups. Helen co-founded Property Sisters to support women in real estate investing and frequently speaks on funding and startup challenges.
Chris Elphick
Head of Venture Capital - British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA)
Chris leads on venture capital policy at the BVCA and works closely with their members to promote the role the industry plays in the UK economy by supporting entrepreneurs and businesses. Chris is also a member of the Independent Advisory Board for the Digital Growth Grant run by Barclays Eagle Labs and is an adviser to the APPG for entrepreneurship. He has represented the BVCA on a wide range of influential consultations and reports, including the Patient Capital and Khalifa reviews.
Nick Button-Brown
Founder - The Games Angels
Nick is a games industry veteran and founded The Games Angels, a collective of industry veterans investing in and supporting early stage gaming companies, as well as being named 2024 Angel of the year by UKBAA. Nick is also Chair at Outright Games, Chair at Coherence, a Board Member at Tiny Rebel Games and Adinmo; and a Strategic Advisor at Payload Studios as well as being on the board at UKIE and is a founder trustee with OKRE in their work linking research and entertainment.
Karl Rego
Impact Investor, Advisor & Co-Chair - Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of the UK
Karl is a Chairman, Advisor and Investor with 25 years’ experience in the Impact space; he is a thought leader with an audience of ~ 1 million. He has founded, funded, scaled, and exited multiple businesses, and has deployed $150 million+ for impact ventures. He helps tech scaleup founders simplify complexity to get the clarity they need to move forward with confidence. Karl is Co-Chair of the Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of the UK, who have invested in ~60 startups, with 8 noteworthy exits including the $2.3 billion acquisition of Rover (Dogbuddy) by Blackstone, the £385 million IPO of Pension Bee, and others to Apple, GoPro and Prudential. He began his career at Johnson & Johnson as Director of Business Transformation. He then ran a top benchmark on responsible Workplace, Marketplace and Environmental practices for Business in the Community.
Aly Read
Chief Commercial Officer - SeedLegals
Aly is a dynamic commercial leader with nearly a decade of experience driving revenue growth and scaling teams across FinTech and LegalTech. As Chief Commercial Officer at SeedLegals, Aly oversees the GTM strategy, overseeing sales, account management, marketing, and partnerships. SeedLegals are dedicated to empowering founders by simplifying the fundraising process, enabling over £2 billion of investment raised on platform to date.
Previously, Aly scaled teams to over 60 at the UK’s largest peer-to-peer lender, Funding Circle. Renowned for fostering high-performing teams, Aly excels at creating innovative, results-driven environments that deliver value for both businesses and customers.
Anthony Rose
CEO & Co-Founder - SeedLegals
Anthony is the CEO and Co-Founder at SeedLegals. He’s a serial entrepreneur: he’s built and sold several startups over a career that includes 3D graphics, P2P music, internet video, social TV and online communities.
We’re sure you’ll know and use the BBC iPlayer – Anthony is the man behind it: from 2007 to 2010, he launched and ran the project and other digital services for the BBC, adjusting his team so they worked like a startup to turn the iPlayer into one of the broadcaster’s biggest successes.
Laurent Laffy
Angel Investor, Chairman & Co-Founder - SeedLegals
Former VC and Serial Angel Investor, Laurent has made hundreds of startup investments. Successful exits include lastminute.com, Graze, Tails and CultBeauty. His promising portfolio includes Secret Escapes, Skin&me and Papier.