The Entrepreneurship Centre

Kerry, Managing Partner IQ Capital, has over 20 years of deeptech venture capital experience.

She is the Chairman of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association.

IQ Capital backs thought-leading deeptech founders at seed and early stage and can invest up to £30 million in their outperformers. Exits include to Google, Apple, Oracle and Facebook as well as several IPOs.

Kerry is an active contributor to best practice in venture capital and participates in policy formation through her work with the BVCA and participates in several notable committees relating to cohesion agendas relating to UK Science and Innovation.

Suranga is a General Partner at Balderton Capital. He was previously an entrepreneur and engineer.

Suranga was the founder and CEO of blinkx, the intelligent search engine for video, a company he led for eight years and took public.

Before blinkx, Suranga was an early employee at Autonomy corporation, where he ultimately served as the company’s US Chief Technology Officer in San Francisco.

Suranga read Computer Science at Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, serves on the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology and was granted an OBE for his services to technology and engineering.

Peter Cowley, a University of Cambridge graduate, founded and ran over a dozen businesses in technology and property over the last 40 years.

He has a portfolio of 75 angel investments with ten good exits and thirteen failures.

Peter is a board member of the Global Business Angel Network (GBAN), President Emeritus of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN), former chair of the Cambridge Angels and was UK Angel of the Year 2014. He is a Fellow in Entrepreneurship at Cambridge Judge Business School and is a public speaker on entrepreneurship and angel investing throughout the world.

Anne has worked in University technology commercialisation since 1999. Anne first joined the technology transfer team at the University of Cambridge in 2001, and has held a number of roles with Cambridge Enterprise and its predecessors including Head of Technology Transfer and Interim Director.

Anne joined the Seed Funds team in 2008 and was appointed Head of Seed Funds in 2011. During her time at CE, Anne has supported many early stage companies and served on the boards of Pneumacare, Cambridge CMOS Sensors, Aqdot and Cambridge Touch Technologies to name a few. Anne was a founding member of Praxis, the UK Technology Transfer Training Programme.

Away from Cambridge Enterprise, Anne has worked in technology transfer at Imperial College Innovations Limited, in pharmaceutical development at Evans Medical, and in pharmaceutical product training at Information Transfer. Anne holds a BSc in Medical Microbiology and a PhD in Immunology.

Shaun has global responsibility for Business Development Operations at AstraZeneca (AZ), leading the company’s transaction execution, due diligence and Alliance and Integration Management function including licensing and partnering, M&A, externalisation and divestments.

Shaun was appointed to his current role in 2013. Prior to this, he was Vice President, Strategic Partnering & Business Development (2010-13) and Vice President, Corporate Business Development (2006-10).

Shaun originally joined ICI as an attorney and held positions in the pharmaceuticals, petrochemicals, and legal departments. Following the demerger from ICI, he was appointed Assistant General Counsel, Corporate for Zeneca Group.

Shaun worked on the merger of Astra and Zeneca, the merger of Zeneca Agrochemicals with Novartis Agribusiness to form Syngenta, and the creation of Avecia. Shaun also worked on the acquisition of Cambridge Antibody Technology (CAT) and later MedImmune and led the acquisition of Amylin, and subsequent buy-out of Bristol-Myers’ Squibb’s interest in the AZ – BMS Diabetes Alliance. More recently Shaun led the transaction team for AZ’s global ADC collaborations with Daichi Sankyo for Enhertu and subsequently DS -1062.

Shaun has led AZ’s recent externalisation and divestment programme involving significant sell – side transactions with Pfizer, Aspen, Grunenthal, Cheplapharm, Atnahs, Juvise, Recordati and Covis.

Shaun is a Fellow in Entrepreneurship at Cambridge Judge Business School and a Fellow Commoner of Lucy Cavendish College, Cambridge. Shaun is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of Cambridge United Football Club, and a member of the Board at Cambridge Arts Theatre, Healx and Prostate Cancer Research Centre.

Based in Cambridge, Shaun enjoys rugby and football, and occasionally turns his hand to sports writing.

Tim is a tech entrepreneur from the Cambridge Cluster, passionate about using big data and AI to accelerate treatments for rare diseases. He is the Co-founder and Chief Executive of Healx, the AI-powered, patient-inspired tech company, accelerating the discovery and development of rare disease treatments at scale.

In this role, Tim has been listed in The Sunday Times Maserati 100 list of entrepreneurs in 2019, was featured in The Telegraph’s Tech 100 in 2019, and was named one of In Vivo’s 30 Rising Leaders in the Life Sciences in 2020. He was also named as ‘One to watch’ in The Telegraph’s Top 50 Most Ambitious Business Leaders in 2020.

Tim is also the Co-founder and Trustee of the Cambridge Rare Disease Network (CRDN). Prior to Healx and CRDN, he obtained his PhD at the University of Cambridge in the field of biophysics and neuroscience, developing nanobody technology for Parkinson’s disease. Before moving to Cambridge UK, Tim obtained an MEng in bio- and chemical-engineering from the University of Brussels.

John was CFO of DisplayLink, a market leading USB graphics software and semiconductor business, from 2011 to July 2020, when it was acquired by Synaptics.

Starting with Sinclair, in 1984, he has been actively involved in the Cambridge technology scene and has held senior management/investor roles in a number of startups, many of which have resulted in successful exits or IPOs.

For the past twelve years, John has been Chairman of the Cambridge Enterprise’s Investment Committee, which currently manages technology assets of circa £65 million and which has an enviable track record of both investment and exit.

Bina is UK Chair at KPMG and leads the firm’s UK Emerging Giants practice, working with fast growth, scale up companies.

She qualified in the UK, was sent to India during the establishment of KPMG India and has more than 20 years international M&A and Restructuring experience in the UK, USA and Canada.

She is actively involved in the trade and investment agenda, supporting scale up clients to access to finance and growth via international trade opportunities.

Bina leads the firm’s relationship with the Department for International Trade and is a member of the Council for Investing in Female Entrepreneurs.

Jon Reynolds co-founded SwiftKey in 2008 and was CEO until its acquisition by Microsoft in 2016. SwiftKey is best known for its smart typing technology which learns from each user to accurately autocorrect and predict their most-likely next word, and features on more than 1 billion devices to date. Jon studied Physics at the University of Cambridge and prior to founding SwiftKey, worked as a civil servant in the British Government. He was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to technology.

Blaise is CEO of Bitfount, a platform for collaborative machine learning on data that is not directly accessible.

Prior to Bitfount, Blaise founded Vocal iQ, which sold to Apple in 2015 and led Apple’s Cambridge team and acted as Chief Architect for Siri Understanding until 2019.

Simon is an angel investor, entrepreneur, coach, mentor and NED to early-stage technology companies. He has invested in over 50 companies (with a third founded/run by women) achieving nine exits along with seven failures.

Simon is Managing Partner of Delta2020, Chair of Cambridge Angels, Cambridge Judge Business School Entrepreneurship Fellow, and UKBAA Angel Investor of the Year 2016/17

He is a University of Manchester (UoM) Innovation Factory NED, UoM mentor and Manchester Tech Trust member.

A member of Angel Academe supporting female entrepreneurs.

He is a sports and outdoor enthusiast, cyclist, skier, petrol/electric head, and traveller.

Simon is an active proponent of the digital economy empowering #digitalentrepreneurs.

Until recently Jamie was a Venture Partner with Pond Venture Partners, investors in early stage companies in the fields of semiconductor, communication, wireless and software. His current interests are IoT and the development of embedded control systems.
He has a BSc from Bath University in Physics and Physical Electronics and started his career in analogue and digital chip design at Plessey Research (Caswell), who part-funded his degree.

Jamie left Plessey to join Acorn Computers in 1984 to start on the implementation of the ARM processor, later managing the VLSI Design team. Jamie was part of the founding team of ARM Holdings from its inception in November 1990 until November 2002. At ARM he undertook a number of roles, including VP of Sales and Marketing, Chief Operating Officer when the company floated on NASDAQ and the LSE, and latterly Chief Strategy Officer. After ARM he was an angel investor, before joining Pond Venture Partners as a Venture Partner.

He has experience of working with public companies and start-ups in operational and non-executive roles. He chaired the ESCO Steering Group whose report in 2013 led to the formation of the ESCO Council.

Jamie is a Fellow of the IET and an Honorary Fellow (Entrepreneurship) of the Judge Business School.