Top 50 Big Data Angel Investors in United Kingdom in January 2025

Will Martin - Founder and Director @ Portfolio Ventures

Will Brooks - Founder & Director @ Portfolio Ventures

Jaan Tallinn is the Co-Founder of the Centre for Study of Existential Risk and Future of Life Institute.

Gareth Williams co-founded Skyscanner Limited in 2001 and has been its CEO through to 2018. Chairman to Jan 2020. We spent $6m of primary capital raised through to $1.8bn sale to Trip.com. Now ‘funemployed’ and learning.

Matt co-founded EF after being a consultant at McKinsey & Co. Prior to EF Matt spent his time studying at MIT fuelled by an obsession with R, Python and unusual datasets. EF is the best place for Europe’s top technical individuals to meet and build world-changing startups in London.They select purely on the basis of technical talent, so youcan apply before you have a team or an idea. The intensive 6-month programme is designed to give you the best possible support in the first 200 days of your startup’s life.They have created over 40 startups now worth over $300 million. The startups are funded by some prestigious investors including Balderton Capital, Index Ventures, Octopus Investments and Y Combinator.

Having worked in the life sciences industry for over ten years as an academic researcher, Jonathan identified the market opportunity for supplying high quality antibodies to support protein interaction studies and, in 1998, founded Abcam with David Cleevely and Professor Tony Kouzarides. Jonathan is a Non-Executive Director of Horizon DiscoveryGroup plc, The Evolution Education Trust, GeoSpock Ltd and Sydicate Room Group Ltd. He is also Chairman of Axol Bioscience Ltd, PhoreMost Ltd, Repositive Limited, Definigen Limited and Cambridge Allergy Ltd. Jonathan holds an executive director position at Meltwind Limited, being a designated member of Meltwind Advisory LLP. Jonathan is an experienced entrepreneur and investor and is passionate about supporting UK life science and high-tech start-ups. He has provided considerable investment and support to over 30 companies and has assisted three AIM IPOs.

Co-Founder at Skyscanner

John Taysom started the Reuters Venture Capital Fund in Palo Alto in 1995 making 82 investments in internet and web infrastructure and services including Verisign, UltraDNS, Digimarc, ZeroKnowledge and Intertrust. He was a member of the Board of Digimarc pre and post its Nasdaq IPO, a Board member at Intertrust and a Board member at TIBCO throughits Nasdaq IPO. To date, seventeen of his investments have achieved an IPO.John acquired the Fund in an MBO in 2002. Now London-based with a seed portfolio of thirty US and UK start-ups; one has achieved an IPO and several have been acquired by Experian, Linkedin, Tesco, BMC and others.In 2011 and 2012 John took a Fellowship at Harvard to work on privacy issues and holds EU and US patents on a method of improving privacy online. For 2015 John is a Policy Fellow at the University of Cambridge Centre for Science and Policy and a Visiting Professor, Department of Computer Science, at UCL. He is a member of the Board of the Web Science Trust; chairs Performance Horizon, a fast growing UK startup; is a Governor at Hurstpierpoint College; and runs a small farm in Devon.

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 toCustom Inc for close to $100m. Alice set up Code First: Girls, a not-for-profit that helps young women explore careers in technology, including teaching them to code for free. She is also on the Imperial College Computer Science Industrial Liaison Board and was made an MBE in 2016.

Alex Zubillaga is the founder of 14W, a New York-based, venture capital firm focused on consumer Mobile, Web, E-commerce, CPG, and Media.Previously, Alex was Executive Vice President, Digital Strategy and Business Development at Warner Music Group (WMG). Prior to WMG, Alex founded Net Uno, a leading Venezuelan cable television and broadbandoperator where he served as CEO and Chairman.

Sir Terry Leahy joined Cheshunt, England-based Tesco in 1979 and held marketing positions at the retailer before becoming commercial director of fresh foods in 1986 and a member of the board in 1990. Leahy was appointed Chief Executive of Tesco plc in March 1997.Leahy received a Knighthood for services to food retailing in the 2002 New YearHonours. He was voted as Britain’s Most Admired Leader (2005 and 2006) by Management Today, recognized by the Wall Street Journal and CNBC as European Business Leader of the Year (2005), and named European Businessman of the Year by Fortune (2004). A Guardian Unlimited Politics panel found him to be the most influential non-elected person in Britain in 2007.Leahy is a Director on the Liverpool Vision Regeneration Board and a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council.In 2010 he received the Daily Telegraph’s Award for a Decade of Excellence in Business, a Lifetime Achievement award from Director Magazine, and was voted Business Person of the Year by the Sunday Times.Sir Terry Leahy retired from Tesco in March 2011.

Harry is a partner at OMERS Ventures, previously at Balderton Capital & BGF Ventures- and the youngest investor in the inaugural Forbes "Midas List Europe", thanks to investments such as The Hut Group, GoCardless, Touch Surgery and Revolut. Prior to Balderton, Harry co-founded Firefly Tonics, a healthy energy drink brand that sells inover 30 countries, sold to Private Equity in 2012. Harry started his career at McKinsey & Co., the strategy consultancy, in London and New York.

Deborah Quazzo is a Managing Partner at GSV Ventures and a Co-founder at ASU+GSV Summit. She was a Founder and Managing Partner at GSV Advisors. He attended Princeton University and Harvard Business School.

Iain McDonald - Founder @ Belerion Capital

Dave Bailey is CEO of The Founder Coach, an organisation that supports venture-backed founders around the world. Dave runs several programs for startup and scale-up CEOs, and works one-on-one with a limited number of CEOs as executive coach and mentor. Dave is editor-in-chief of The Founder Coach blog, and hosts The Founder Coach Podcast, mentorsat Techstars in London, and angel invests in areas of his domain knowledge.Previously, Dave co-founded three VC-backed businesses including Delivery Hero, Ezlearn and Spotnight. Dave studied Mathematical Sciences at Oxford University, before going on to Stanford Graduate School of Business and Singularity University.

Bill is the founder of the William Currie Group, which specializes in investments in the retail, e- commerce and tech sectors. Previously Bill was a top-ranked, multi award-winning retail analyst for Barclays (BZW), Hoare Govett and Charterhouse Securities, where he was Joint Managing Director. Current directorships include Eagle Eye Group PLC,Metapack Ltd, and LTS Group. Key past investments have included ASOS, QXL, The Hut Group, Zooplus, Caffé Nero and Anatwine

David Gammon 17 years investment banking experience. He founded Rockspring in 2002 and is a Cambridge Angel.

Charles Songhurst is a founding partner of Katana Capital, a long-short equity hedge fund. He also runs the Songhurst Group, which holds assets in a variety of private companies.Charles ran corporate strategy for Microsoft and focused on partnering and M&A. He was involved in the Yahoo acquisition and commercial deal, and the Skypeacquisition. Before running corporate strategy, Charles was focused on the emergence of Google and the growth of the search industry.Prior, Charles was an analyst at McKinsey & Company in London. Charles received a bachelor’s degree from Oxford University in politics, philosophy, and economics.

Wendy Tan White is the Chief Executive Officer of Intrinsic. She Previously worked at X, the moonshot factory as the Vice President, Moonshots at Alphabet, X.Wendy Tan White attended Imperial College London.

Darrin Disley is the CEO, Director & Investor at Mogrify. He attended University of Cambridge.

Bob Willet

David Braben Chairman at Frontier Developments.

Stefan is an entrepreneur and investor from Germany who enjoys living in London. He is the co-founder of companions.de, companionsTV, ricardo.de and myblog.de. He is the founding investor and executive Chairman of Mendeley.com and RjDj.me and has been and in the same role at Last.fm. Stefan is a firm believer in European entrepreneurship andan active angel. He holds a PhD in foreign exchange risk management and was a professional DJ for 15 years.

Thor Bjorgolfsson - Entrepreneur, Businessman and Adventure Capitalist Thor Bjorgolfsson, Iceland’s first and only current billionaire, is an investor and business innovator who is not afraid of risk. He has been an entrepreneur since childhood, making his first deal at the age of 10, when he purchased a stack of vintage Marvel comics withborrowed money.In 2004, he founded Novator Partners, an alternative investment firm. He has strategically developed the company to allow it to maintain maximum flexibility as well as to facilitate investments in both strategic (buy and hold) and financial (buy and exit) opportunities.With Novator, Thor leverages private equity as well as macro investments and manages assets across a variety of sectors and geographic locations. He is an active investor in emerging economies including Central and Eastern Europe as well as Latin America.Novator Partners has been a major player in telecom businesses. Thor is a stakeholder in a Polish telecom company called Play, which went public in 2017. In addition, he holds shares in WOM, a Chilean telecommunications firm.Bjorgolfsson’s first fortune was made in post-soviet Russia. At a time when others perceived Russia to be tumultuous, he saw an underserved market that presented an exciting opportunity to invest in great ideas and businesses. He co-founded and developed Bravo Brewery, which produced beer and alcopops. Bravo became one of Russia’s premier brewing companies, particularly through its popular Botchkarov beer brand. Thor sold the business in 2002 to Heineken for $100 million.With the sale of Bravo, he was able to diversify his holdings by reinvesting in new ventures, focusing on telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, and banks. In a few years, he was able to turn that $100 million into a net worth of over $2.1 billion.A year after being featured on the 2007 cover of Forbes Magazine, Iceland went nearly bankrupt overnight and Thor found himself at the epicenter of the financial crisis. As a major shareholder in Landsbanki with personal guarantees of 350m euro, he refused to declare bankruptcy and eventually succeeded in paying off all of it. He then went on to invest in new businesses, re-establishing himself and being featured on the Forbes list of billionaires once again.During this time of rejuvenation, he wrote Billions to Bust and Back: How I Made, Lost and Rebuilt a Fortune, And What I Learned on the Way (2014). In the book, he shares his perspective of what it was like to be at the center of the storm and how he made it back to financial success. He proposes that the greatest strength an entrepreneur can possess is a positive attitude.The 52-year-old Thor was educated in the United States where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree from New York University. In 2005, he was honored as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In spite of his intense schedule, Thor enjoys sharing his experience and business insight, making him a sought-after speaker. A multilingual Icelandic citizen, Thor spends most of his time in London, living with his wife and three children. Thor's personal passion is his collection of six motorcycles, which he rides whenever time permits.

Created the Mule Project, Founded MuleSoft, gone public (MULE:NYSE). Work on their product direction, vision and strategy. Active investor and advisor.

Dorothy Chou is the Head of Public Affairs at DeepMind.

Ivan Zhang is the Co-founder of Cohere. He attended University of Toronto.

Michele Attisani - CBDO @ ESL FACEIT Group

Javier was co-founder and Executive Chairman of Cluster Consulting, until its sale to Diamond Technology Partners in 2000 to create DiamondCluster, where he was the Chairman for Europe and Latin America up until 2003.He was also a co-founder, substantial investor and the Executive Chairman of Nauta Capital, a venture capital fund based inBarcelona with offices in Boston and London and investments in both Europe and the United States. For instance, he led the investment in Social Point, where he is also the Chairman.Javier holds a degree in Telecommunications from the University of Barcelona and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

Ariel Yaar - VP Research and Development @ Readz

Shane Feng - MD @ Coral Reef IO

Stuart Marks is a successful entrepreneur who has built and sold four businesses over the past 25 years. They have spanned several sectors including CRM, location-based services and digital media. Every company applied innovation to challenge existing business models.Stuart has worked with a diverse and international customer-base includingSainsbury’s, British Airways, Unilever, Vodafone, BMW and various government agencies across the world. His previous company, ITIS Holdings plc, was listed on the London Stock Exchange and was Europe’s leading provider of real-time traffic information and connected car technology.The first company to commercialize crowdsourced data from GPS devices and mobile phone networks, Stuart sold the firm in 2011 to Washington-based INRIX before going on to establish L Marks to invest in the entrepreneurs of tomorrow.

DLK is a co-founder and General Partner of LVP. He has over 25 years experience in the games industry,Previously, he was the founder, President & CEO at Criterion Software Group, including RenderWare & Criterion Games. Before Criterion, DLK co-founded Canon Research Europe, and headed multi-million dollar R&D in computer graphics,image processing & UX. David holds degrees in Mathematical Statistics & Operations Research and a PhD inComputer Science.

Charles is a business and product leader with 20 years of experience building, advising and investing in category-defining platform companies.Most recently Charles served as Chief Operating Officer at Temporal Technologies, the leader in durable execution systems where he built and led all the company’s go-to-market and product functions whilecreating the category and launching the commercial product. In less than 3 years Temporal grew its users, customers, revenues and value by 20-100 times.Prior to Temporal Technologies, Charles spent nearly 10 years building Cloudera first as the product leader and subsequently as general manager for Cloudera’s 3 high growth business units. As the longest serving member of the leadership team, Charles helped Cloudera grow from a pre-product startup with less than $10 million in funding to a multi-product public company with nearly $800 million in ARR. Charles has advised or invested in other notable platform companies and investors including Airbyte, Baseten, Huggingface, Streamsets and Y Combinator.Charles has an undergraduate degree from Carleton College and a master’s from MIT and lives in San Francisco.

Dr. Nicholas E. White serves as Senior Vice President for Science by leading the space science operating sector within USRA and providing oversight of scientific activity across USRA institutes and programs. This sector spans work in astronomy and astrophysics, lunar and planetary science, biomedical and life sciences, Earth science, spacetechnology, and advanced scientific computing.White came to USRA after a distinguished career at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. of more than 20 years. White led the Sciences and Exploration Directorate, where he was a leader in space and Earth science and a trusted steward of the center's projects and research programs. Throughout the course of his career, White pioneered space-based research both as a scientist and a Senior Executive. White previously held the positions of director of Goddard's Astrophysics Science Division and Chief of the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics. White was the founding director of the highly successful High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center. Prior to joining NASA, White worked for the European Space Agency. His research is primarily in the area of X-ray astronomy, studying black holes and neutron stars. His pedigree includes more than 200 publications in refereed journals.Amongst the many recognitions of his leadership are the Presidential Meritorious Rank Award and the Goddard Space Flight Center Exceptional Achievement Award. White is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He received a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the University of Leicester and a doctorate in Space Science from University College London.

Matteo Stefanel - Managing Partner @ Apis Partners

Founder and CEO of Funderbeam, the global funding and trading platform of private companies built on blockchain. Funderbeam combines three stages of investor journey into one: startup analytics, investing, and trading on the secondary market. Powered by blockchain technology, the marketplace delivers capital to growth companies and on-demandliquidity to investors worldwide. Member of Startup Europe Advisory Board at European Commission. Kaidi is a former CEO of Nasdaq Tallinn Stock Exchange and of the Central Securities Depository. Co-Founder of Estonian Service Industry Association. The first IT lawyer in Estonia, she co-author of the Estonian Digital Signatures Act of 2000 -- landmark legislation that enables secure digital identities and, in turn, the country’s booming electronic economy. Kaidi was named as an Entrepreneur of a Year in 2018 by the Playmakers Technology Award and as a Person of a Year in 2016 by the Estonian IT and Telecommunication Association. Co-author of #Foundership Playbook and mentor of various girls and women in tech initiatives.

Joachim Behrendt is the Head of the Advisory Board at Vali Berlin.

Javier Rubio

In 1999 invested as business angel and co-founder in Buongiorno Spa: the first Italian start up in the digital marketing space to become public in Borsa Italiana; in Buongiorno he took a full time managerial role as Head of the Business Development and International Expansion. From 2013 onwards he has been building – as business angel, anchorinvestor and board director - a portfolio of several digital tech companies like DoveConviene, BeMyEye, Supermercato24, Domino’s Pizza (all in the Consumer Goods sector) in addition to some others (The Fork, PetMe, Aerodron, Outfittery, MySecretCase) ranging from hi-tech to sharing economy and e-commerce. He partners and co-invests with major Italian and European VCs, namely Highland Capital Europe, Nauta Capital, 360 Capital Partners, Innogest, P101, Principia and others. He is active member of U-Start, a major European Investment Club, and acts as mentor&coach for B!Ventures and IMPACT, the leading european accelerator, backed by the Ntt Docomo and EU. He sits in the advisory board of Blu 1877 (the Barilla Corporate Venture Capital arm) and of ScaleIt http://scaleit.biz/ (the leading platform matching Italian best Start Ups with international venture capital investors)

Michel Combes was the Chief Executive Officer of Assystem.

Dan Heron is a Family office investor.

David Castle

Mark Woolley is Managing Director, European Head of Insurance Coverage at Natixis.

Arnaud Massenet

Steve Pankhurst

Paolo Rubatto is Managing Director of Start Capital. His background is mainly entrepreneurial, advising startups from the consumer internet to the life sciences sector in their business development strategies as well as in their fundraising. He holds an MBA from London Business School.

Jason McGibbon is a Non-Executive Director of Fable Data and The Scottish National Investment Bank.

Joanne Wilson has had many careers. She started out in retail, eventually moving to the wholesale arena. She then transitioned to the media side of the technology world, before once again reinventing herself as an investor. She is currently an active angel investor with a portfolio of over 90 companies such as Food52, Sweeten, Vengo, Nestio, Phinand Phebes, Makers Row, Clutter, and Union Station. She has been involved in numerous real estate transactions from beginning to end and continues to make investments in that world. She is also an investor in a few restaurants in the New York area. In addition to these endeavors, Joanne has been involved in various education projects and served as chairperson at Hot Bread Kitchen, non-profit committed to increasing access to the culinary industry for woman and minority entrepreneurs. She also sits on the board of The Highline. Joanne has maintained her very popular blog, www.gothamgal.com for over 11 years and has recently take her talents to the airwaves on her podcast, ""Positively Gotham Gal"". She loves to bake, cook, throw a good party, travel, read, collect art, do the crossword and stay on top of what's happening around the globe and in NYC.Her most successful venture is being married to her best friend, Fred and raising their three kids- Jessica, Emily and Josh