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…
