Disrupt London is approaching quickly and we’re excited to introduce you to our stacked lineup of speakers and judges. The event takes place at former Olympic Village’s Copper Box Arena and you can buy tickets here.
The conference kicks off on December 5 and is packed both days with a lineup featuring inspiring entrepreneurs, savvy investors and TechCrunch’s world-renowned Startup Battlefield competition. At the end of it all, one startup will take home £30,000 and the coveted Disrupt Cup. These are the speakers and judges.
Mustafa Suleyman is co-founder and Head of Applied AI at DeepMind, where he is responsible for the application of DeepMind’s technology to real-world problems, as part of DeepMind’s commitment to use intelligence to make the world a better place. In February 2016 he launched DeepMind Health, which builds clinician-led technology in the NHS. Mustafa was Chief Product Officer before DeepMind was bought in 2014 by Google in their largest European acquisition to date. He will speak at 9:05 AM on Monday, December 5.
Nicole Eagan is Chief Executive Officer at Darktrace, where she has led the company since 2014, and rapidly grown it into a global leader in cyber defense. Winner of ‘Woman of the Year’ award at The Cyber Security Awards 2016, Ms. Eagan has an extensive career in technology leadership with over 25 years of commercial and marketing expertise, turning fundamental ideas into real world products and helping companies scale. Under Nicole’s leadership, Darktrace’s machine learning and mathematical approach to cyber defense has won over 40 awards including World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer. She will speak at 9:25 on Monday, December 5.
Niklas Zennström is CEO and Founding Partner at Atomico. He is an experienced entrepreneur, having previously co-founded and managed globally successful technology companies including Skype, Kazaa, Joost and Joltid. In 2006, Niklas created Atomico to help entrepreneurs, primarily from outside Silicon Valley, to scale their businesses globally. In addition to overseeing Atomico’s strategy, he works closely with a number of founders of portfolio companies and sits on the boards of Rovio, Mapillary, Truecaller, Farmdrop and ZocDoc. He will speak at 9:45 Am on Monday, December 5.
Ole Harms is Executive Director and Head of New Business and Mobility Services at Volkswagen Group founding the 13th Brand for mobility services, and is also a Board of Directors Member of Gett. Ole has also worked at Volkswagen as Director New Business Models and Performance in 2012 and Principal, Head of Sales and Marketing Practice in 2008. He will speak at 10:05 on Monday, December 5.
Shahar Waiser is the Founder and CEO of Gett. He is a serial entrepreneur who’s founded and built companies in the U.S. and internationally. In early 2000, Shahar founded the Russian entity of publicly traded Comverse [CMVT] and served as its first CEO with $300M record in total sales. After moving to Silicon Valley in 2005, Shahar founded and then sold Loyalize, a social engagement & loyalty startup based in San Francisco (acquired by Viggle [VGGL]). In 2011 Shahar founded Gett, which has since raised over $520 million in venture funding and was selected by Forbes as one of the “top 15 explosively growing companies. He will speak at 10:05 on Monday, December 5.
Ismail Ahmed founded WorldRemit after 20 years’ experience in the money transfer industry – spanning academic, consulting and in-house roles. Before setting-up his own business, he worked for the United Nations Remittance Programme, helping African money transfer companies comply with tough anti-money laundering rules introduced after the 9/11 attacks. He will speak at 10:25 AM on Monday, December 5.
Ann Cairns is president of International Markets at Mastercard, Cairns is responsible for the management, growth and expansion of all markets and customer-related activities outside of North America. Working across both mature and emerging markets Ann has firsthand insight and experience of how to build a team focused on delivering strong business growth and meaningful global and local partnerships through innovative, sustainable and inclusive business models. She will speak at 10:25 AM on Monday, December 5.
Frederic Court is the Founder and Managing Partner of Felix Capital (“Felix”), a new London-based venture capital firm operating at the intersection of technology and creativity. Felix’s first fund closed oversubscribed at $120m, with a strategy to invest in digital lifestyle, backing new digital brands and related enabling technologies. The investment strategy is in line with Frederic’s track-record in these markets with investments such as Farfetch (a global online marketplace for the fashion and luxury industry, where he was the first investor and is still on the board), Zong (mobile payments, sold to eBay for $240m), Vitrue (social media marketing SaaS, acquired by Oracle for $310m), Dailymotion (online video platform, now part of Vivendi), or Olapic (SaaS for the CMO, sold to Monotype for $130m, just 13 months after Felix’s investment). He will speak at 11 AM on Monday, December 5.
Sonali De Rycker joined Accel in 2008 and helps lead the London office. Sonali focuses on consumer, software and financial services businesses. She led Accel’s investments in Avito (Naspers), Lyst, Spotify, Wallapop, KupiVIP, Calastone, Wonga and SilverRail. She is also an independent director of Match Group, Inc (public). Prior to Accel, Sonali was with Atlas Ventures. She grew up in Mumbai and graduated from Bryn Mawr College and Harvard Business School. She will speak at 11 AM on Monday, December 5.
Reshma Sohoni worked in M&A and venture capital across B2B Software and Internet services businesses in the US and India. She had a hand in building MakeMyTrip (NASDAQ) in its formative days. Following on from this, Reshma went to INSEAD and earned her MBA and stayed in Europe to work in Commercial and Marketing Strategy at Vodafone.
Starting Seedcamp in 2007 was a once in a lifetime opportunity and one that she jumped into with a strong desire to help the European founder realize global success. Reshma brings a good mix of tech, business, commercial drive, marketing and that American chutzpah to our incredible team. She will speak at 11 AM on Monday, December 5.
Martha Lane Fox is founder and executive chair of Doteveryone.org.uk. In April 2016 she was appointed as a non executive director of Twitter. Martha became a crossbench peer in the UK House of Lords in March 2013. In March 2014 she was appointed Chancellor of the Open University. Martha co- founded and chairs LuckyVoice, revolutionizing the karaoke industry. She is a non executive director of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Creative industries federation, the Scale Up Institute and the Open Data Institute. She will speak at 11:25am on Monday, December 5.
Matt Hancock is the MP for West Suffolk, having been elected in the 2010 general election and he is also the Minister of State for Digital & Culture. Before entering politics, Matt worked for his family business, as an economist at the Bank of England, and as Chief of Staff to the then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne. He holds degrees from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. He will speak at 11:25am on Monday, December 5.
Axelle Lemaire has been Minister of State for Digital Affairs in the French government since
9 April 2014. In this capacity, she drafted and promoted the Digital Republic Bill which aims
to bolster the data economy and transparency of government action, to establish new rights for
Internet users and to make digital technology more available to everyone.
Axelle worked as an international lawyer in both law firms and academic research institutions, and then served for several years in the House of Commons as a parliamentary assistant. In June 2012, she was elected as a Socialist MP to represent French citizens living in Northern Europe at the National Assembly. She will speak at 11:25am on Monday, December 5.
James Wise is a partner at Balderton Capital, and is the youngest partner of a Series A Venture Fund in Europe. Since joining Balderton in 2012, he has led on investments across Europe in sectors such as mobile productivity, 3D printing, VR/AR tools, and SaaS platforms. Two companies that James has worked with have exited to Microsoft and Amazon. Before joining Balderton, James helped set up and run one of the UK’s first social impact funds, and previously worked as an advisor to the British Parliament, as well as at McKinsey & Company. He will speak at 11:25am on Monday, December 5.
Amy Chang is founder/CEO of Accompany, an intelligent, adaptive virtual chief of staff product. She sits on the boards of Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) and Splunk (NASDAQ: SPLK), and served on the board of Informatica from 2012-2015, when it was taken private for $5.1B, and on Target’s (NYSE: TGT) Digital Advisory Council from 2013-2016. Prior to Accompany, Amy led Google Analytics for seven years, growing coverage from 1% to over 70% of the web. She will speak at 3:10 on Monday, December 5. She will also be a judge in the Startup Battlefield competition.
Marc Raibert was Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and a member of the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory from 1986 through 1995. He is co-founder and President of Boston Dynamics Inc, (BDI), which is located near MIT in Cambridge. Raibert’s research is devoted to the study of systems that move dynamically, including physical robots and animated creatures. Raibert’s laboratory at MIT, the Leg Lab, is well known for its work on systems that move dynamically, including legged robots, simulated mechanisms, and animated figures. He will speak at 3:30 on Monday, December 5.
Dr. Mike Lynch is the founder of Invoke Capital, a $1billion fund which invests in fundamental European technologies, Mike Lynch has long been regarded as a visionary figure in technology, described by the Financial Times as “the doyen of European software” and by the Sunday Times as “Britain’s Bill Gates”. He holds a PhD from Cambridge in Machine Intelligence, he sits on the Prime Minister’s Scientific Advisory Panel and is a UK Business Ambassador. Mike has founded a number of companies, including Autonomy, the UK’s largest software company, with a market capitalisation of $11bn. He has invested in a number of start-ups, including Darktrace, Luminance, Neurence, Sophia Genetics and Featurespace, and has also advised venture capital and private equity groups such as Apax Partners and the Carlyle Group. He will speak at 3:50 on Monday, December 5.
Elizabeth “Beezer” Clarkson leads Sapphire Ventures’ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. She began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Since, she has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, as well as operational roles in software business development at Hewlett Packard. Most recently, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide. She will speak at 4:20 PM on Monday, December 5.
Fabrice Grinda is an Internet entrepreneur, angel investor, student and lover of life, aspiring Renaissance man and co-founder of FJ Labs, a venture investment firm and startup studio. Fabrice was also co-founder and CEO of OLX, the largest classifieds sites in the world. He will speak at 4:20 PM on Monday, December 5.
Roxanne Varza is the Director of Station F, which is set to be the largest startup campus worldwide.
Prior to her current role, Roxanne was the lead for Microsoft’s start-up activities in France, running both Bizspark and Microsoft Ventures programs for 3 years.
Business Insider listed her as one of the top 30 women under 30 in tech. She has also been listed in additional rankings by Business Insider, Vanity Fair and Le Figaro, The Evening Standard and more. She will speak at 4:45pm on Monday, December 5.
Naren Shaam worked as a Global Product Manager managing multi-million in business in auto industry before getting his Business degree at Harvard. After his Harvard education, he worked in financial services in NY. In April 2012, he moved to Berlin to found a new innovative travel company GoEuro. GoEuro is one of most innovative startups in Berlin and has already closed over $4M in seed financing from top tier VCs such as Battery Ventures and Hasso Plattner Ventures along with industry leaders including Dave Baggett (Founder, ITA Software) and many others who are founders of airline and travel companies around the world. He will speak at 9:05 AM on Tuesday, December 6.
Professor Jackie Hunter is the CEO of BenevolentBio. She has held senior positions at global pharmaceutical organisations including GSK, Proximagen and OI Pharma Partners and joined benevolent.ai as CEO of benevolent Bio in 2016. Jackie has a vast academic and business experience in the biomedical and pharmaceutical sectors. She directs the application of benevolent.ai’s technology for drug development and give the company the insight it needs to operate its unique business model – one which sees it not only researching, but also developing the blueprint for new drugs. She will speak at 9:25 AM on Tuesday, December 6.
Omar Tayeb is the CTO and co-founder of Blippar, a leading augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and computer vision company. Tayeb is credited for developing the original technology responsible for launching Blippar into the forefront of the AR industry. His passion for innovation has been instrumental in powering the AR and visual discovery experiences that have attracted over 66+ million users to the platform. Tayeb leads the tech team and is the company’s point person for AR and AI development. As the driver of the company’s technology and innovation, Tayeb is responsible for pushing the boundaries for what’s possible not only for Blippar but for the AR industry as a whole. He will speak at 9:45 AM on Tuesday, December 6.
Samantha Payne co founded Open Bionics, an award winning robotics company that is changing the face of the prosthetics industry. Samantha’s startup is developing bionic hands in the style of superheroes, enabling young amputees to become their favourite characters, like Iron Man! She will speak at 10:10 AM on Tuesday, December 6.
With over 30 years of experience leading some of Wall Street’s top institutions, David is a longtime creative thought leader in financial markets and innovation and has played a significant role in the adoption of electronic trading in the global OTC derivatives industry. David served for ten years as the CEO of Electronic Broking at ICAP Plc, the world’s largest interdealer broker, where he led the BrokerTec fixed income and EBS foreign exchange platforms. Prior to ICAP, David was co-owner and CEO (Americas) of Prebon Yamane. He will be speaking on Tuesday, December 6 at 10:30 am.
Azmat Yusuf is a Founder at Citymapper Limited. Yusuf previously worked at Google, as well as in the venture capital and equities fields for international banks. He started the app in 2011 as a guide for Londoners to navigate the city’s bus network. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in both Electrical Engineering and Economics and received his MBA from INSEAD in 2009. He will speak at 2:10 PM on Tuesday, December 6.
Alex Zhu is the Co-founder & Co-CEO of musical.ly, based out of San Francisco. He has been behind the mobile social network’s success around the world, especially amongst teens. Prior to founding musical.ly, Zhu was Principal Creative Director at Microsoft driving “mobile disruption” initiatives in the consumer space. He also co-led the initial design of SAP’s flagship product at while at SAP. He will speak at 2:30 PM on Tuesday, December 6.
Natalia Vodianova is a successful supermodel who directly experienced the power of digital media when she first approached social networks as a celebrity and as a user. She is the co-founder of ELBI, a platform that aims to bring philanthropy in the daily life of people. She is speaking at 2:50 PM on Tuesday, December 6.
Julien Codorniou serves as Director and global head of Workplace by Facebook, managing all things sales, customer success and partnerships for this initiative, built out of London. He joined Facebook in 2011 to manage the gaming team in EMEA and was recently leading the global Platform Partnerships team, helping Facebook partners to build, grow and monetize their apps with Platform.
Since 2012, Julien has served on the board of the French media group Le Monde. He’s also the co-author of the book: “The Kelkoo.com success story”, published by Pearson in 2005. He will speak at 3:10 pm on Tuesday, December 6th.
Eileen Burbidge is a Partner at Passion Capital, the pre-eminent early-stage VC fund based in London. She brings extensive operational experience to her investment activities gleaned from business and product roles at Yahoo!, Skype, Apple and elsewhere. In addition to Passion Capital, Eileen is also the Chair of TechCity UK, which is the British government-backed organisation supporting digital business across the UK. She will speak at 11:25am on Monday, December 5 and will serve as a Final Round Judge on Tuesday, December 6.
Steve Hilton is co-founder and CEO of Silicon Valley political crowdfunding and data start-up Crowdpac. He also teaches at Stanford University’s Institute of Design (d.school), and is the author of the Sunday Times bestseller More Human – Designing a World Where People Come First. Steve was previously Senior Advisor to UK Prime Minister David Cameron, where he helped lead the implementation of the British government’s domestic reform program. He is speaking at 3:30 PM on Tuesday, December 6.
Daniel Korski CBE was a former special adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron. He has worked as an adviser to Andrew Mitchell MP, the former Conservative Chief Whip, and for the British member of the European Commission, Catherine Ashton, as well as for Edward Llewellyn, during his time as chief of staff to Lord Paddy Ashdown, the then-UN High Representative of Bosnia-Herzegovina.
As a British official, Korski worked in a number of positions in London, Washington DC, Iraq, Yemen and Afghanistan. He deployed to Kabul, Afghanistan, in 2005 to advise President Hamid Karzai’s government; and in 2007 he ran the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Basra in Iraq, overseeing the post-conflict reconstruction of Basra province during the height of the conflict. He also undertook a secondment to the U.S. State Department under then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. In between these postings, Korski helped establish and was the deputy head of the cross-departmental Stabilisation Unit. He is speaking at 3:30 pm on Tuesday, December 6.
Jason Goldberg is founder and CEO at Pepo. Prior to Pepo Jason founded Hem, Fab, Social Median, and Jobster. He is speaking at 4:20 pm on Tuesday, December 6.
Antoine Martin is the co-founder and CEO of Zenly. Launched in 2015, it brings real life to mobile through location. He leads product development. He will speak at 4:40 PM Tuesday, December 6.
Chris Boos is the Founder and CEO of Arago, a leading artificial intelligence company that helps businesses automate their IT processes through intelligent automation. Chris oversees strategy and product development — helping to establish the company at the forefront of artificial intelligence — and continues ongoing research in AI, while guiding Arago’s technology applications in business. An expert in graph theory and decision systems, Chris studied computer sciences at ETH Zurich as well as Technical University Darmstadt, did research in U.S. and European institutions and was awarded the John F. Kennedy National Leadership Award in 2003. He will speak at 5 PM Tuesday, December 6.
Judges
Alice Bentinck is co-founder of Entrepreneur First, the early stage investor that builds deep tech companies from scratch. EF invests in individuals with computer science and engineering backgrounds and has built more than 100 companies. Their portfolio includes exits such as Magic Pony Technology to Twitter for a reported $150m and Represent to Custom Inc for close to $100M. She will serve as a judge in the Startup Battlefield competition.
Carlos Eduardo Espinal is a Partner at Seedcamp, founder’s first round fund providing up to €200k and a lifelong platform, with over 230 investments helping pre-seed and seed stage companies reach product-market-fit. Carlos was an Associate at Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, an early-stage investment firm based in London and an engineer for the Advanced Communications Technologies group of The New York Stock Exchange (SIAC). Carlos was awarded with Wired Europe’s 100 Most Influential in Digital, British Interactive Media Association’s Hot 100 Digital People, and TechCityInsider’s 100 List and published “The Fundraising Fieldguide” book in 2015. He will serve as a judge in the Startup Battlefield competition.
Don Dodge is a Developer Advocate at Google and an advisor to Google Ventures. Prior to joining Google Don was a technology evangelist at Microsoft. Don is also a veteran of five start-ups including Forte Software, AltaVista, Napster, Bowstreet, and Groove Networks. Don is also an active Angel investor in 35 companies. Don sits on the Boards of Aras, StatSocial, Federated Sample, and Iotera. Don is an advisor to several startups including Symphony (Perzo), Nimble, Blockai, and Aisle411. He will serve as a judge in the Startup Battlefield competition
Saul Klein is a Partner at Localglobe, a new seed fund focussed on helping London’s great most ambitious founders build game changing businesses. Previously, Saul was a Partner at Index Ventures from 2007 until May 2015. In 2012 David Cameron appointed Saul to be the UK’s first tech envoy to Israel and a Technology Business Ambassador. He will serve as a judge in the Startup Battlefield competition.
Sean O’Sullivan is managing director of SOSV, the pioneering venture capital firm that is a world leader in running vertical startup accelerator programs. His first company, MapInfo, grew to a $200 million public company with over 1,000 employees, and popularized street mapping on computers. His first internet company, NetCentric, developed many concepts in internet computing, and he is credited as the cocreator of the term “cloud computing.” He will serve as a judge in the Startup Battlefield competition.
Featured Image: Bucchi Francesco/Shutterstock
