I met the Mangrove team during my days as Chief Operating Officer of Skype and joined the firm as a Partner in 2007, after a 25 years career in the Telecom industry. During those years, I had the opportunity to work for, grow and start myself a dozen different businesses. At Mangrove, my first role is to lead our effort in the Mobile space, an exciting market being created right in front of our eyes. Of course, I look for big ideas. But above this, I look for the passion, drive and ambition in a founding team, and a genuine reason why they believe they can dominate their sector. I like to work closely with unusual entrepreneurs and need to feel some connection to them. Then, I also use my previous experience in fast-growing environments to help our companies scale and develop their revenue-generating activities. I currently serve on the boards of Evertale, Jolicloud, Pops, SohoOS and Waratek. I grew up in the UK, completed my graduate training at the BBC and after that, I launched off into startup land, as lead engineer at the first competitive phone company in the UK, which sold to Vodafone. Then, I moved to Denmark, and launched 9 mobile operations and 2 ISPs across Europe with Tele2. All were high growth operations with millions of paying customers. Some were very successful, others less so. Then, I joined the founding team of Skype that I had met at Tele2. As the COO of the company, I was responsible for rapidly growing an idea into a well managed multi-million dollar business. After 18 years living in Denmark, I now live in Luxembourg, but travel every week and weekend around Europe to meet existing and potential companies. Spare time for me is about debating with people who challenge me intellectually. I graduated with honours from University College London with a degree in Communications Engineering.
Tuesday, January 27, 2015
5:30 PM – 8:00 PM UTC
5:30 PM | Networking and Food |
6:30 PM | Fireside Chat |
7:30 PM | Networking |