Mat Munro

Newton Venture Program provides venture capital training and development for aspiring investors, practising investors, and others in the venture space. Our mission is to level the playing field for people from typically overlooked and underestimated backgrounds, ensuring that the next generation of investors represent the world we live in. Newton Alumni span the globe with more than 500 people from all backgrounds going on to secure positions in VC firms, accelerate their careers in VC, and become disruptors of the status quo. As of the start of 2024, 46% identify as female or non-binary, and 49% identify as the global majority. Newton is a joint venture between Phoenix Court and London Business School with founding partner, HSBC Innovation Banking. With our unique blend of faculty and practitioner teaching, we are training the investors of tomorrow to back the ventures of the future.

Octopus Ventures, part of Octopus Group, is one of the largest and most active venture capital investors in the UK and Europe. We’re on a mission to invest in the people, ideas and industries that will change the world. We back entrepreneurs ─ from the first cheque their business receives, right through to IPO. We manage £1.8bn and are investing in more than 200 businesses, focusing on the companies solving three of the world’s biggest problems: those building a sustainable planet, empowering people, and revitalising healthcare. We know what it takes to build a successful business. We support founders through our strong teams, sector expertise and deep networks, using our people and talent to help them build a better tomorrow.

Tokenised investment collective backing early stage startups in NA and EMEA. We identify opportunities to invest in early stage startups then work within our network to assemble the most appropriate slate of investors. Each investment is treated as a standalone fund​ and each LPs​ share of the overall investment is tracked via an investment specific ERC-20. Butter helps small cap angles participate in increasingly expensive early stage funding rounds by helping them to pool their funds alongside other investors - in return startups gain access to a hand picked group of domain experts, all of whom are invested in their success, whilst only adding one entity to their cap tables.

pollarize is a free decision making application that helps users create a simple A/B question and share it on a variety of social networking services, including our own. Formed at London Startup weekend in late March 2012, pollarize went on to be accepted into the inaugural class at the Wayra UK Academy and is currently working on delivering version 1 of its mobile application.