Nico has spent his career both investing and operating in the lower mid market.
On the investing side: he joined the founding team of a venture fund that grew to £350 million across two funds, then spent four years at an institutional buyout fund backed by the British Business Bank, where he split his time between sourcing, execution and portfolio management.
On the operating side: he parachuted into a streetwear retailer post acquisition, where he worked on a turnaround that added £4 million of EBITDA in twelve months.
He is at his best in the gap between the warehouse and the boardroom, where most of the value in a small business is won or lost.
Turns things round, then finds the money to make them bigger.
After university, at twenty-four, Mark was handed the keys to a pub in Borough - £150 a week and the flat upstairs. Eleven months later, revenue was ten times what he’d walked into, and he’d been threatened enough to decide he’d rather get people drunk in a suit than in jeans. That pub is now the first of a group across South East London.
In the City he ran a freight derivatives desk, took it from sixth in the market to first, and monthly revenue from $60,000 to $360,000. Then, with his old mentor, he was one of the partners who built a hedge fund platform from nothing to over $575 million across five strategies - $325 million of it through Mark’s own introductions. The placement firm they co-founded went on to raise over £100 million in private markets. Since then, he’s sat beside the owners of private companies through MBOs, raises and buyouts - watching, too often, what happens to good people who run out of road.
Ask him about his family business and Liverpool Football Club.
The SWAT team.
The specialists on staff to help the businesses we back.
A serial founder and operator in technology, Carl co-founded Overture Europe, the paid-search pioneer acquired by Yahoo! in a ten-figure exit, then built Yahoo’s first mobile search business in California. He co-founded Somo, the digital product agency, and scaled it as COO to an eight-figure exit to the listed consultancy CI&T, where he became a global partner delivering digital products and enterprise AI for brands including Audi, Vanguard and BT. An active investor, with further exits including SwiftKey (acquired by Microsoft) and Howsy (acquired by Dexters), he now advises corporates on putting AI to work. If the business runs on a spreadsheet only you understand, Carl makes it run without you.
From founding team to scale, Pamela has spent her career selling essential services into British homes. She started at BT, launching the first home broadband, then at British Gas repositioned Dyno-Rod, the national emergency drains network - vans and uniforms included - and launched the digital presence that became 70% of its sales. She joined the founding team of Hive, British Gas’s smart-heating venture, winning 100,000 customers in its first year, then helped grow Vodafone’s new consumer smart-tech business to 2.8 million customers and €76 million of revenue across ten markets. As a founding executive at Aira, the European clean-energy company replacing gas boilers with heat pumps, she became Group CMO and UK Commercial Director as the business grew from nothing to a €150 million revenue run rate in two years. If customers would choose you but have never heard of you, Pamela fixes that.