#RDGUK Office Hours is a hyper-local community-driven initiative to proactively foster a collaborative ecosystem to help businesses succeed in Reading, UK.
For one full day each month people in Reading can participate in a variety of Office Hour sessions taking place in Fora located in Thames Tower. These include Investor, Legal, Finance, HR, Digital Skills, Marketing & Sales Office Hours, workshops, mentoring and mastermind sessions from some of the leading companies and professionals in their respective fields.
Day Pass includes access to all #RDGUK Office Hours sessions, the Fora Business Lounge and a hot desk for the day, breakfast, lunch and end of day drinks. You'll also benefit from fast WiFi, great coffee, exquisite teas and an incredibly helpful, dynamic and well connected community. Join us :).
View the detailed Session Schedule here.
Playfair Capital
Managing Partner
Ethical Reading
Director
Terrafiniti
Partner
Holy Brook Associates
Director
Optima HR
Director
Tamsin Regnes
MBTI® Certified Practitioner
Chris is Managing Partner at Playfair Capital.
He focuses his investing activities on seed (and pre-seed) deals in the UK and Israel. Chris is particularly interested in autonomous transportation, business and industrial automation (especially through AI, ML and computer vision), HealthTech (except diagnostics and therapeutics) and B2B SaaS. He loves finding companies operating in unloved/overlooked sectors that are ripe for disruption.
Prior to joining Playfair, Chris held senior roles at plan.com including Sales Director, Head of Tech/BI and Head of Product Development. He was the 8th member of the team and over a 4 year period built an award winning sales team, introduced new products (organically and through acquisition) and lead the roll out of version 4 of the platform. Revenues grew to £50m in 2018 and the company ranked #1 in The Sunday Times Tech Track 100.
In addition to his roles at plan.com, Chris worked on the re-launch/re-branding of Vannin Capital (another Bramden Investments' portfolio company which was acquired by Fortress Investment Group LLC in September 2019).
Chris has executed over a dozen angel investments across the UK and US in the past 10 years with three notable exits to date - Nearbuy Systems (acquired by RetailNext), MoPowered (LON:MPM) and Bidstack (LON:BIDS). He is passionate about investing in tech companies and supporting founders using his extensive operational and legal experience.
In his previous life, Chris spent nearly a decade in the City as a transactional lawyer in the private equity team at Weil and the corporate team at Olswang. He has worked with some of the world’s leading private equity and venture capital funds on predominately international acquisitions, disposals and restructurings. At Weil, he spent time on secondment to the Silicon Valley office’s patent litigation team, UK-based food manufacturer Premier Foods and the Asset Protection Agency.
He also setup a telecoms business offering discounted international calling from 14 countries in 2001 which he partially exited via an MBO in 2005.
Session Title: The megatrends are happening
Session Title: Sustainability – why it makes business sense
Session Title: Pricing Your Work
Session Title: Secrets of scaling up! – Creating a high performing operating environment
Session Title: Are you trying to frustrate me?.... How to look at differences through a positive lens.
Startup Grind
Community Evangelist, EMEA
See Bio
Startup Grind Thames Valley
Director
Fora
General Manager
Fora
Guest Experience Manager
VIVA Photography
Founder & Image Director
Austin Fraser
Regional Contracts Manager
TechnicalNature
Founder & Design Director
Phin Mpofu is a globally connected entrepreneurship evangelist, inspired by how it can be used as a force for good. He is Startup Grind's Community Evangelist for EMEA helping the local Chapter Directors build incredibly helpful, dynamic and well-connected communities for their ecosystems. He is himself a Chapter Director for Startup Grind Thames Valley and spearheads the hyper-local #RDGUK Office Hours initiative.
His commitment to helping entrepreneurs was recognised in 2016 by the Centre for Entrepreneurs. He was listed on The Maserati 100, the annual list which recognises entrepreneurs who are generously giving their time and resources to support the next generation of young entrepreneurs. Phin is a Fellow of the Centre for Entrepreneurs.
