Harry Nelis

Harry Nelis is Partner at Accel. He joined the fund in 2004 and focuses on software, fintech and consumer internet companies.

Harry led Accel’s investments in Carto, KAYAK (NASDAQ: KYAK; acquired by Booking.com), Showroomprive (EPA: SRP), Funding Circle (LON: FCH), Callsign, Celonis, CHECK24, Instana (acquired by IBM), Miro, Taxdoo and Zepz.

Harry started his career in Silicon Valley as an engineer at Hewlett-Packard before founding a venture-backed software company. Harry is from the Netherlands and graduated from Harvard Business School and Delft University of Technology.

About Accel

Founded: 1983  |  HQ: United Kingdom  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

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Adam Valkin

I invest broadly in consumer Internet and SaaS companies in the US and Europe. I enjoy spending time with founders attempting to fundamentally upgrade the customer experience in large consumer verticals like food, automotive, healthcare, banking & payments, insurance, education, gaming, and fitness. I also look at vertical software companies in these areas that are largely focused on arming the incumbents to do the same. The companies I have been involved with at General Catalyst include Alyce, Array, Blank Street, Bloom & Wild, Bowery, Brainly, Bustle, Cazoo (NYSE: CZOO), CCP (acquired by Pearl Abyss), ClassPass (acquired by MindBody), Deliveroo (LON: ROO), Fundbox, Giphy (acquired by Facebook), Hometap, Hopin, Kavak, Melio, Monzo, Pento, Rapyd, Rebag, Remesh, Ro, Shift Technology, Snackpass, Spinny, SuperPlay, Titan, Vroom (NASDAQ: VRM), and Zego.

I have a diverse set of experiences in the technology industry, including working for startups, being an executive at a large company, and as an investor. Prior to joining GC, I was a venture partner in the London office of Accel Partners, and earlier, I was a partner at venture capital firm Arts Alliance. I have also had the opportunity to co-found two companies in London with successful exits, LOVEFiLM (acquired by Amazon) and Propertyfinder (acquired by Zoopla).

Much of my venture career has been spent focusing on emerging ecosystems such as NYC, London, Stockholm, Tel Aviv, Paris, and Berlin. I lived in London for 14 years and have been in Boston for the last eight. I spend much of my time in New York, London, and Tel Aviv, helping to expand GC’s geographic footprint.

About General Catalyst

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Series A-Growth

Julie Kainz

Julie joined Lightspeed Venture Partners as an investor in London to help build out the team and presence on the ground, as Europe is seeing an inflection point in its venture activity.

Before joining Lightspeed Venture Partners, Julie focused on investing in data, infrastructure, and automation at Dawn Capital, Europe’s leading fund focused purely on B2B software and fintech. Prior to that, she was an investor at Salesforce Ventures, where she helped shape the fund’s strategy in Europe and fell in love with B2B investing.

Julie participated in deals from Series A to pre-IPO and backed some of the most exciting businesses across Europe and Israel, such as Algolia, Appsflyer, Contentful, or Gong. Before that, she worked with founders even earlier in their journey – most often at inception or ideation stage – during her time as one of the early team members at Founders Factory, an incubator, and accelerator based out of London.

Julie graduated with a double degree from CEMS MIM, an international multilingual business program offered by some of the leading universities across the world. As such, she spent time in Austria, New Zealand, The Netherlands, and Germany during her studies. Growing up close to the mountains, Julie loves to unwind outdoors, may it be hiking to a remote hut in the mountains or taking her longboard for a surf trip along the coast.

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

Rick Yang

Rick joined NEA in 2007 and is the head of the firm’s consumer investing practice. His main focus is on fintech and consumer investments. Growing up as a nerdy gamer, he also has a particular interest in gaming and esports.

Rick partners closely with founders, building a collaborative and trusted relationship at the earliest stages of a company. Some of his current investments include Bestow, Drop, Gen.G, Genies, MasterClass, Omio, Plaid, PlayVS, and Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD). Historically, he was involved with Braintree (acquired by PayPal), Gaikai (acquired by Sony), Opendoor (NASDAQ:OPEN), and Pure Energies (acquired by NRG).

Rick also serves on the Board of Stanford Athletic Department’s investment fund and the Stanford Engineering Venture Fund. He is also an All Raise VC Champion and mentor for BLCK VC.

Prior to joining NEA, Rick worked at Credit Suisse, where he advised on and executed a number of strategic financing initiatives for leading public and private tech companies as part of the Technology Group. Rick earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was also a varsity swimmer.

About NEA

Founded: 1977  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

Jessica Schultz

Jessica is Partner at Northzone and Co-founder of HelloFresh. At Northzone her main focus is DTC and consumer internet. Her portfolio includes Red Points, Na-Kd, Matsmart, Klarna, Outfittery, Flink and Fyndiq.

Prior to joining Northzone, Jessica co-founded and was CMO of market-leading meal-kit service HelloFresh, spearheading the global marketing operations.

She started her career in consulting at LEK, and holds an MSc, Economics and Business from the Stockholm School of Economics.

About Northzone

Founded: 1996  |  HQ: United Kingdom  |  Stage: Seed-Series B

Carlo Giovanni Biggio

Carlo Giovanni Biggio focuses on Cloud, Fintech and Security businesses.

Prior to joining Accel, Carlo was with Anthemis and Rocket Internet, focusing on early-stage European startups.

Carlo is from Cagliari, Italy and graduated from Bocconi University and the Rotterdam School of Management.

About Accel

Founded: 1983  |  HQ: United Kingdom  |  Stage:  Seed-Growth

Juliet Bailin

Juliet Bailin is a Principal at General Catalyst, a venture capital firm that partners with founders from seed through growth to build companies that withstand the test of time. At GC, Juliet works with founders in enterprise software and healthcare in Europe and the U.S. Prior to joining General Catalyst, Juliet was an Associate Partner at Mosaic Ventures in London after starting her investing career at Insight Partners in New York. Juliet is on the board of, or actively involved with, the following GC companies: Enable Medicine, Evvy, Gitpod, Packfleet, Lottie, Charm Therapeutics, Alinea Health, Shareback, and Percent.

About General Catalyst

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Series A-Growth

Alexander Schmitt

Alexander joined Lightspeed Venture Partners’ European investment team in 2022 and is primarily focused on making investments in the B2B and FinTech sectors.

He’s passionate about growing Europeans’ entrepreneur ecosystem and splits most of his time between Berlin and Munich.

Having been through the journey of building and selling a business himself, Alexander empathizes deeply with founders and knows how challenging, especially in the early days, can be. Before Lightspeed Venture Partners, he also spent time on the other side, previously an investor at Cherry Ventures, a European early-stage Venture Capital firm.

Alexander graduated at the intersection of Computer Science and Finance, from Technical University Munich, MIT, and the CDTM (Center of Digital and Technology Management),

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

Luke Pappas

Luke joined NEA in 2017, and is currently a Principal on the technology investing team focused on consumer and enterprise companies. Luke is a Board Observer of Aquabyte, goop, PlayVS, and Sitetracker, and is also involved in NEA’s investments in Inkitt, Cleo, Gen.G, and several other early-stage companies. Luke also works closely on Connect Ventures, which is our investing partnership with CAA, working alongside companies like Blacktag, Spire Animation, Unless Collective, and the entire Connect Portfolio. Luke has also worked closely with Bloom Energy, Cloudflare, Snap, Uber, and helped orchestrate NEA’s spin-out of NewView Capital.

Prior to joining NEA, Luke was a member of the Technology Investment Banking Team at Morgan Stanley in Menlo Park where he worked on a variety of capital markets and M&A transactions across the software, semiconductor, consumer internet, and hardware sectors, with companies such as Airbnb, Nutanix, Nvidia, Pandora, and Snap.

Luke graduated from Stanford University with dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Computer Science, with a focus on computer systems, and Management Science & Engineering, with a focus on finance and statistics. While at Stanford, Luke competed on the Varsity Baseball team, and launched QueueStatus to help manage the waiting lines that would often develop at office hours.

About NEA

Founded: 1977  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

Sarah Nöckel

​​Sarah is Vice President at Northzone, where she is responsible for their Seed investments. She is based in London and focuses on early-stage companies across data and developer tools leveraging community led growth, productivity SaaS and new platforms that lower the barriers to entrepreneurship.

Sarah is Founder of Femstreet, the leading newsletter and global community for female entrepreneurs and women in venture capital. Previously, Sarah was a B2B SaaS investor at Dawn Capital investing across data analytics and open-source infrastructure.

Sarah grew up in Germany and graduated with a degree in Business and Finance from the University of Vienna and CASS Business School London.

About Northzone

Founded: 1996  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Early Stage

Rafael Quintanilla

Rafael joined Accel in 2022 and focuses on software, consumer and fintech businesses.

Prior to Accel, Rafael was an investor at Speedinvest and then New Wave, where he focused on Seed investments across Europe. He initially started his career at Allfunds in London before the company went public.

Rafael grew up in between Switzerland and Spain, and graduated from King’s College London and Imperial College London.

About Accel

Founded: 1983  |  HQ: United Kingdom  |  Stage:  Seed-Growth

Mark Crane

I acquired my respect for entrepreneurs through my own journey as a founder. As a freshman at Amherst, I jumped at the opportunity to operate my own business, providing summer and year-round storage solutions for students at Amherst College, UMASS, Mt. Holyoke, Smith, and Hampshire. It was a formative experience — hiring, staying ahead of the competition and making the numbers. When I graduated, I sought out a role in finance to gain a deeper understanding of the underlying metrics that make a business successful.

Working closely with investors and entrepreneurs at JMI and Cove Hill showed me how complex and wonderful those roles and relationships could be. Companies are living, breathing organisms, and founders are the forces of nature that drive them.

About General Catalyst

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Series A-Growth

Alex Momeni

As a second-generation Iranian immigrant, Alex was always aware that much of the world’s population faces tremendous challenges. He started his career at Goldman Sachs in London with the ambition of leveraging capital markets to help transform the developing world. But his motivation for transitioning into healthcare was personal – like many, he watched a close family member receiving critical care in a clinical setting and realized just how vital it was to help transform the overall healthcare system.

Seeing technology as a more powerful vehicle for change, he pursued an advanced degree in machine learning at École Polytechnique in Paris and was fortunate to spend six months as a visiting researcher at Stanford. That experience inspired his entrepreneurial side and led him to join Nabla, where he built product lines that empowered doctors to be more effective and accessible for underserved populations.

About General Catalyst

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Series A-Growth

Zeynep Yavuz

When I left Turkey to study economics at the University of Chicago, I knew that my native country lacked the venture investing ecosystem that could have helped my entrepreneur parents build their technology company. I decided to help that change by becoming an investor, focusing on underserved regions and countries.

I began my career in tech investment banking at Merrill Lynch in New York, then moved to the investing side with the global growth fund TA Associates in London. There I learned how to build trust with entrepreneurs from varied backgrounds and nationalities, many of whom had not previously considered venture capital or private equity to support their growth. During my MBA at Harvard I recognized the importance of operating experience to support entrepreneurs. I joined the product team at the cross-border payments company WorldRemit, experiencing how fintech was enabling emerging economies in Africa to leapfrog conventional banking systems.

At General Catalyst, I focus on fintech and crypto. While Europe is my base, I work with early-stage companies globally, especially in emerging markets.

About General Catalyst

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Series A-Growth

Victoria Helena Faber

About Lightspeed Venture Partners

Founded: 2000  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed-Growth

William Jilltoft

Will is a Vice President based in Stockholm and focuses his time primarily on the Wider web3 movement incl. gaming, fintech, DeFi, and data in Northern Europe. Will works closely with PJ Parson and before taking on a broader investment role he worked as PJ’s Chief of Staff.

Prior to Northzone, he co-founded PWC Sweden’s accelerator program, worked with Natalia Brzezinski and the team at Brilliant Minds. And got a taste of the real world as a fisherman in the Barents Sea.

He holds an MSc. in Finance and Management from The Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm

About Northzone

Founded: 1996  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed and Early

Maxine Rior

Based in Stockholm, Maxine is part of the investment team at Northzone. She covers the Nordic and French-speaking markets across a wide range of sectors, although with a special interest in the consumer and B2B2C spaces, where social, commerce, and food play a large role in her day-to-day.

Prior to Northzone, Maxine was with Swedish investment company Kinnevik. She started her career in the investment banking division of Carrnegie Investment Bank, where she advised clients in the financial services and tech sectors.

Maxine grew up in Sweden and in France and holds a Masters in Engineering from Lund University.

About Northzone

Founded: 1996  |  HQ: United States  |  Stage: Seed and Early