Awards Judges
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.
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.
Anna Gordon
Senior Business Development Manager, UKI Partnerships & Hubspot for Startups
Anna manages the HubSpot for Startups program for UK & Ireland and partners with VCs, Accelerators, Incubators, and Entrepreneurial Communities. Her goal is to connect startups with the right knowledge, tools and network needed to scale. Prior to HubSpot, Anna worked at Enterprise Ireland where she both advised and secured investment for Irish tech startups and SMBs.
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.
Anthony Rose
CEO & Co-Founder at 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.
Perdie Alder
Co-Founder & CCO - Hotbed
Perdie has over 7 years of experience in the startup ecosystem, supporting thousands of founders and investors. Before starting Hotbed, she designed programs for entrepreneurs in London, Greece, and Ghana. Most recently, Perdie was Head of Programme at TechHub, a staple of London’s “Silicon Roundabout” tech scene. Prior to that, she worked at unicorn tech scale-up Reward Gateway.
Margaret Anne Coyle
Co-Founder & CEO - Hotbed
After working on the programs team at TechHub, Margaret co-founded her first company, Spice Startups, the day after finishing her final exams at university. With over 5 years of experience in the London startup ecosystem, she’s worked with 2500+ startups. Now Margaret is focused on building Hotbed to shape the future of early stage startup building and investing.
Hannah Seal
Partner - Index Ventures
Hannah joined Index in 2016 after a successful career as an e-commerce operator. She is fascinated by the future of work, and has been an early and consistent champion of Europe’s B2B software sector.
Hannah is passionate about helping visionary entrepreneurs from day one, and supporting them as their companies scale and grow. She is particularly energized by founders who have an unfair advantage in tackling daunting problems in technical or challenging markets. Her investments for Index include Remote.com, a platform to enable distributed working; Multiverse, the company bringing apprenticeships into the digital age; Fonoa, the automated tax platform; and Beauty Pie, the online cosmetics and beauty subscription service.
Before joining Index, Hannah managed the consumer marketplace business for Ebay in the UK, and set up the General Merchandise business for Ocado. She holds an economics degree from the University of Cambridge.
Reshma Sohoni
Founder Partner - SeedCamp
Reshma Sohoni is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Seedcamp, the European seed fund she co-founded in 2007 with a strong belief that European entrepreneurs have the power to compete on a global scale. Over a decade later and Seedcamp has pioneered the European early-stage investment landscape and backed over 470 companies including publicly listed Romanian-founded, UiPath, Wise (formerly TransferWise), and unicorns Revolut, wefox, Pleo, Sorare, Grover, viz.ai, and Synthesia. Reshma is frequently listed as one of the most influential women in technology and VC and has been recognised on Forbes Midas List for Europe as one of the most influential VCs on the continent 5 years in a row. In 2019 she also made it to the no1 spot on the FT’s most influential BAME tech leader list. Reshma was awarded an MBE for services to the British Technology Entrepreneurship Ecosystem in 2021. Reshma is passionate about the intersection of business and technology and has degrees in Engineering and Business from UPenn and M&T as well as an MBA from INSEAD
Olivia Sibony
Co-Founder at Impact Amplified - GEP Dealmaker at Department for International Trade
Olivia (Liv) Sibony is an award-winning entrepreneur and trailblazing ethical investment champion. She is co-founder of Impact Amplified, where she works with industry experts, entrepreneurs and academics: empowering purpose-driven leaders with the means to be catalysts in the journey towards business as a force for good.
Liv left a career at Goldman Sachs to launch her foodtech startup, GrubClub, which she sold to Eatwith in 2017. As well as her work with Impact Amplified she an advisor for the UK Department for Business and Trade (DBT), enabling more impactful entrepreneurs from around the world to scale their businesses, relocating to the UK. She is also a Board member of UCL’s Fast Forward 2030, which aims to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to launch businesses that address the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well as being Vicechair of the Mayor of London’s Women in Cleantech Taskforce. She is Head of Impact at Angel investment Network, the world’s largest online angel investment platform.
Hugo Tilmouth
CEO at ChargedUp - Partner at Founders Capital
Hugo Tilmouth is a 3x founder of companies such as ChargedUp – global shared power bank network, ServedUp – (exited) payments company for hospitality and CleanedUp – (exited) sanitiser company developed within Covid. While running these companies Hugo raised $10m from investors such as Jamjar and Tom Blomfield. Hugo has now founded Founders Capital + Club a community for series A+ founders and investment syndicate for the next generation of founders.
So far we have invested £1M into around 10 companies. Hugo has also won Forbes 30u30, Huran u30 and Young Founder of the Year.
Kofi Siaw
Vice President - HSBC Innovation Banking
Kofi is a VP in the early-stage banking team at HSBC Innovation Banking. Kofi supports early-stage companies grow and scale and has a particular focus on underrepresented founders.