Topic: Venture Capital

Eileen Burbidge

Eileen Burbidge is a Partner at Passion Capital, the pre-eminent early-stage technology venture 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. On behalf of Passion, Eileen serves as non-executive director on a number of fast growing SMEs including Monzo Bank, Digital Shadows, Marshmallow and Butternut Box among others.

Burbidge started her career in Silicon Valley, working for some of the world’s most prestigious tech companies, including Apple, Yahoo!, and Sun Microsystems. In 2004 she moved to London to become one of Skype’s earliest employees. In 2011, as a founding partner of Passion Capital, Burbidge was part of the team that built the pre-eminent early-stage technology venture fund based in London. At Passion, she serves as board director for Digital Shadows, Focal Point Positioning, Prowler.IO, Butternut Box and other portfolio companies.

Eileen Burbidge is also a member of the board of Dixons Carphone, the FTSE 250-listed consumer electronics retailer. Eileen was awarded an MBE in the 2015 Queen’s Birthday Honours for services to Business. She also holds a BSc Engineering degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Burbidge was also formerly chair of financial technology start-up Tide, one of the first digital-only finance platforms in the UK to provide current accounts for businesses, and an early investor and director at consumer challenger bank Monzo; where she is now Board Director.

In 2018, Dixons Carphone appointed Burbidge as an independent non-executive director of the Board and a member of the Audit Committee, and she joined the Transformation & Innovation Advisory Board for UniCredit in early 2019.

In addition to Passion Capital, and as described by Fortune Magazine as “The Queen of British VC”, Eileen Burbidge is one of the UK’s biggest Tech personalities and one of London’s most influential venture capitalists. She is the UK Treasury’s Special Envoy for Fintech, appointed by the Chancellor; Tech Ambassador for the Mayor of London’s office and served on former UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s Business Advisory Group as well as Chair of Tech Nation for 5 years, stepping down in 2020.

Arnaud Bonzom

Arnaud Bonzom is a former Venture Partner at 500 Startups where he was focusing on helping Southeast Asian entrepreneurs to succeed. He is a frequent speaker at several international conferences including Slush, Tech in Asia, Rise and Web Summit.

Arnaud is active as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at INSEAD and has co-authored a report with INSEAD on how the largest organizations are engaging with startups which achieved press coverage across 28 countries and generated more than 120 speaking engagement invitations.

He has been invited by Accenture, Airbus, Allianz, Amazon Web Services, BMW, Deloitte, INSEAD, MERCER, NUS, Standard Chartered, as well as the Estonian, German and the Singaporean Governments, among others to share his input on Corporate Innovation and Startup Ecosystem.

His extensive work in the startup ecosystem received more than 160 citations in prominent media such as Forbes, Bloomberg TV, and Les Echos. His research is also quoted by leading organizations including Bain, SAP, BNP Paribas, and Orange.

His main research interest is in Startups and Innovation.

He is also the co-founder of Map the Money, an organization that helps entrepreneurs to raise funds in Southeast Asia. As well as the author of The Asia Funding / M&A Newsletter and the Singapore startup ecosystem and entrepreneur toolbox.

Earlier in his career, Arnaud was involved in setting up and growing new businesses including for INSEAD as Assistant Director of Corporate Partnership Development. Prior to that, he worked at Business France as Trade Advisor in New Technologies, Innovation and Services.

Arnaud holds a Masters Degree in International Marketing and Business Development at SKEMA Business School as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Versailles.

Sandro Salsano

Sandro Salsano is a self made italian born billionaire businessman and philanthropist.

He was dubbed by Forbes the Warren Buffett of Central America on its cover in march 2019.

Sandro is President of Salsano Group, a private conglomerate investing in real estate, global private equity and technology.

He is Chairman of Salsano Family Office and Trustee of Salsano Shahani Foundation.

He is a graduate of Bocconi University and also studied at Oxford, Harvard and Princeton University.

He was named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2014.

Forbes included him as the 6th richest person in Central America on its 2019 billionaires list with a net worth of 1.3bn usd.

Martin Roll

Martin Roll is an experienced global business strategist, senior advisor and facilitator to Fortune 500 companies, Asian firms and family-owned businesses. He advises clients on how to build and manage strong global brands, as well as leadership of high-performing, marketing-oriented businesses.

Martin Roll is CEO of Martin Roll Company with more than 25 years of board & C-suite counselling experience. He is an advisor to several global boards and prominent business families, and a mentor for next generation leaders in business families, start-ups and high-growth companies.

Martin Roll has been a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company.

Martin Roll is a highly accomplished keynote speaker at global conferences, an experienced conference moderator and executive workshop facilitator. He is a Distinguished Fellow (family business) and Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD.

He teaches MBA, EMBA and Executive Education programs at INSEAD, CEIBS and Nanyang Business School and is a frequent guest lecturer at ESSEC, IE Business School, Wharton, Harvard and other leading business schools.

Martin Roll is a Visiting Professor at China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) teaching courses in family business. He has been teaching luxury brand management and strategy at the LVMH Management Academy (Singapore Management University, SMU).

Martin Roll is faculty and keynote speaker at The Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations (HPAIR) - a student-run organization of Harvard University. He is a member of the HPAIR Board of Advisors.

Martin Roll is lecturer and keynote speaker at The Academies by Harvard Student Agencies.

He has been an Associate Fellow at The Institute on Asian Consumer Insight (ACI). Martin Roll is a member of the global Advisory Council of Welspun Group (Mumbai), a Senior Advisor to early-stage venture fund Cocoon Capital (Singapore) and a Senior Advisor to Superson (Finland and Singapore).

He is the author of a global bestseller “Asian Brand Strategy” (2015) and co-author of “The Future of Branding” (2016) with two new books in the pipeline on Family Business Strategy (2020) and Family Office Strategy (2021). He is a columnist for INSEAD Knowledge and regular commentator in global media.

Martin Roll has lived in Asia for two decades and serve clients on all continents. He holds an MBA from INSEAD.