A startup or start-up is a company or project undertaken by an entrepreneur to seek, develop, and validate a scalable business model. While entrepreneurship includes all new businesses including self-employment and businesses that do not intend to go public, startups are new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo-founder. During the beginning, startups face high uncertainty and have high rates of failure, but a minority of them do go on to become successful and influential.
Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) is a public university in East Anglia, United Kingdom. Its origins are in the Cambridge School of Art (CSA), founded by William John Beamont, a Fellow of Trinity College at University of Cambridge, in 1858. It became a university in 1992, and was renamed after John Ruskin, the Oxford University professor and author, in 2005. Ruskin gave the inauguration speech of the Cambridge School of Art in 1858. It is one of the "post-1992 universities". The motto of the university is in Latin Excellentia per societatem, in English Excellence through partnership. Anglia Ruskin University was named University of the Year 2023 by Times Higher Education.
Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing that is provided by firms or funds to startup, early-stage, and emerging companies that have been deemed to have high growth potential or which have demonstrated high growth. Venture capital firms or funds invest in these early-stage companies in exchange for equity, or an ownership stake. Venture capitalists take on the risk of financing risky start-ups in the hopes that some of the companies they support will become successful. Because startups face high uncertainty, VC investments have high rates of failure. Start-ups are usually based on an innovative technology or business model and they are usually from high technology industries, such as information technology (IT), clean technology or biotechnology.
Hermann Maria Hauser, KBE, FRS, FREng, FInstP, CPhys is an Austrian entrepreneur, venture capitalist and inventor who is primarily associated with the Cambridge technology community in England.
Michael Anthony Ashcroft, Baron Ashcroft, is a British-Belizean businessman, pollster and politician. He is a former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. Ashcroft founded Michael A. Ashcroft Associates in 1972 and was the 132nd richest person in the UK, as ranked by the Sunday Times Rich List 2021, with an estimated fortune of £1.257 billion.
Doug Richard is an American entrepreneur best known for his television appearances in the United Kingdom. He appeared as a "Dragon" on the first two series of Dragons' Den and was also a government adviser.
Fred Wilson is an American businessman, venture capitalist and blogger. Wilson is the co-founder of Union Square Ventures, a New York City-based venture capital firm with investments in Web 2.0 companies such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga, Kickstarter, Etsy and MongoDB.
EBAN is an international, not-for-profit organisation whose function is to represent the pan-European early stage investor community, gathering member organisations and individuals from Europe and beyond. Originally targeted only to business angels, today EBAN is a cross sector representative of equity early stage investors.
An angel investor is an individual who provides capital to a business or businesses, including startups, usually in exchange for convertible debt or ownership equity. Angel investors often provide support to startups at a very early stage, once or in a consecutive manner, and when most investors are not prepared to back them. In a survey of 150 founders conducted by Wilbur Labs, about 70% of entrepreneurs will face potential business failure, and nearly 66% will face this potential failure within 25 months of launching their company. A small but increasing number of angel investors invest online through equity crowdfunding or organize themselves into angel groups or angel networks to share investment capital and provide advice to their portfolio companies. The number of angel investors has greatly increased since the mid-20th century.
David Douglas Cleevely, CBE, FREng, FIET is a British entrepreneur and international telecoms expert who has built and advised many companies, principally in Cambridge, UK.
David Semel Rose is an American serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He is an investor in startup technology companies and founder of New York Angels, an early-stage technology investment group. He is Managing Partner of Rose Tech Ventures, a venture fund focused on Internet-based business, and CEO of Gust, which operates a collaboration platform for early stage angel investing.
The Anglia Ruskin University Faculty of Business and Law is a faculty of Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). The faculty has two schools: the School of Economics, Finance and Law and the School of Management. Currently, ARU has business schools in Cambridge, Chelmsford, Peterborough, and London.
Baybars Altuntaş is a Turkish entrepreneur, angel investor, speaker and author based in Istanbul. He founded Deulcom International, a vocational training school in Turkey in 1992 and currently serves as the president of the executive committee of the company. He is currently a jury member on the new Turkish entrepreneurship program and is the current host of the Turkish version of The Weakest Link, En Zayıf Halka
Andy Rachleff is a co-founder and Executive Chairman of Wealthfront. He had previously been the executive chairman of the company after stepping down as the CEO, but then returned to the CEO role on October 31, 2016. Rachleff co-founded Benchmark Capital in 1995 and was a general partner until 2004. Prior to Benchmark, Rachleff was a general partner with Merrill, Pickard, Anderson & Eyre.
Sir Thomas Michael Sydney Hughes-Hallett is a British barrister, investment banker and philanthropy executive. He serves as the Non-Executive Chair of the Marshall Institute at the London School of Economics and the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. He promotes philanthropy, and argues for more ethical engagement within the City of London.
Nevzat Aydın is a Turkish internet entrepreneur, angel investor and a mentor. Aydın is the co-founder and former CEO of Yemeksepeti, the leading online food delivery portal in Turkey.
Bob Goodson is a British technologist, entrepreneur, and UX designer. The CEO of Quid Inc., an artificial intelligence company, Goodson studied medieval literature at Oxford University, and co-founded Quid based on his interest in applying language theory to semantic search.
Fadi Ghandour is a Lebanese Jordanian entrepreneur, investor, and philanthropist. He is the Executive Chairman of Wamda, a platform that builds and invests in entrepreneurship ecosystems across the Middle East and North Africa, Turkey and East Africa through Ecosystem Development programs and a venture capital fund investing in technology-enabled companies that operate in these markets.
Business Angel Network of Southeast Asia (BANSEA) is an angel investment network based in Singapore that provides information to potential investors about newly established businesses. The stated goal of BANSEA is to create business opportunities for angel investors, and aid in the development of profitable business networks.
Icehouse Ventures is a New Zealand-based venture capital firm. The firm is headquartered in Auckland and mainly focuses on the technology industry and has backed 200 companies. The firm also operates a variety of angel groups networks such as Ice Angels and Arc Angels. Icehouse Ventures was formally founded in 2019 as a separate company but had operated as part of the Icehouse group since 2001. In 2019, the founding CEO of the Icehouse stepped down as CEO and joined the board of directors of Icehouse Ventures.
