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How to secure finance for your new business and/or to commercialise your research output

When: —
Venue: Online

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Are you a student-, an academic- or a start-up- entrepreneur interested in understanding how to secure finance to take your research output, innovation and/or business to the next level? Are you a director of an innovation centre looking for seed funding to increase impact of your work?

Please join us to learn from Future Planet Capital and Anthemis.

  • Future Planet is the impact-led, global venture capital firm built to invest in high growth potential companies from the world's top research centres. Future Planet provides venture and growth funding to entrepreneurs and businesses profitably solving the world's greatest challenges in Climate Change, Education, Health, Sustainable Growth & Security. Future Planet is not simply to deliver excellent returns but to create a lasting impact. Our network and strategy provide unrivalled access to companies emerging from leading academic institutions and the centres of innovation that surround them.
  • Anthemis Group is a global platform that cultivates change in the financial system by investing in, growing, and sustaining businesses committed to resiliency, transparency, access and equity. Founded in 2010, Anthemis’ deep understanding of markets and models, passion for emerging technology and values inspire its work. By creating fertile ground for a diverse group of startups, investors, entrepreneurs, institutions, academics, and visionaries to converge, Anthemis hopes to solve the financial systems’ most pressing challenges faster, better and for the benefit of all.

 

We will discuss, among others:

  • Opportunities for securing finance
  • What do investors look for in organisations/teams/innovations that are seeking investment  
  • How to secure initial funds and follow-up investment
  • Tips and advice when pitching for investment
     

You are very welcome to ask questions from our panellists!!!

We have two experienced panellists:

Ed Phillips, Partner, Future Planet Capital

Farhan Lalji, Managing Director and Investor at Anthemis

The event will be chaired by Prof Muthu De Silva 

 

Online Link

This event will take place online and a joining link will be sent to you shortly before the event. 

 

Contact name:

Speakers
  • Dr Muthu De Silva -

    Muthu is a Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Assistant Dean (Research), BEI School, Birkbeck, University of London. Her research contributes to our knowledge on co-creation. She has published in world-leading (ABS 4*) journals such as  Research Policy, Journal of Organizational Behaviour, and British Journal of Management, among others. She has long experience in delivering entrepreneurship modules. 

    She has secured major grants from Innovate UK, Intellectual Property Office, EU and British Academy/Leverhulme, OECD, and British Academy of Management. She is a fellow of Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce.

    She is in the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Management. 

  • Ed Phillips -

    Ed is a Partner and Head of Origination at Future Planet Capital, where he sits on the Seed and Global Growth Investment Committees. He was part of the founding team at Future Planet, helping grow the firm from a $20M experiment fund to ~$400m in AUM today. He set-up and led investments for a number of new strategies, including a Pandemic response micro-fund with Barclays, followed by a Blue Ocean Economy fund for the government of Monaco. He also developed and led Future Planet’s initiative with Seedrs to become the first VC firm to democratise investment into it’s management company.

    He was previously a Venture Fellow and Scout for a leading US deeptech accelerator, Berkeley Skydeck and the UK's most active seed investor, Seedrs. Before Future Planet he spent time researching molecular genetics at Hong Kong University and before that studied Biological Sciences at Bristol University, where he was President of Bristol Think and joint first for the Liv Sidse Jansen Prize for his work into the impact of Climate Change on marine ecosystems.

    Ed’s investments have focussed around the UK and US in Life Sicences, ClimateTech, Circular Economy and DeepTech, including Vaccitech (NASDAQ: VACC), the Oxford spin-out behind the low-cost, COVID-19 vaccine, with 3 billion doses delivered worldwide.

  • Farhan Lalji -

    Farhan is a Managing Director at Anthemis, a Guest Lecturer at London Business School where he lectures on managing digital organisations (or organizations depending on where you’re from) and the Technology and Product Expert in Residence at King’s College London . At Anthemis, Farhan leads the Anthemis investments into funds. Previously, Farhan was responsible for the BBVA & Anthemis Venture Creation Partnership where he was investing in pre-seed companies evolving the digital finance and banking experience for consumers and companies.

    Before joining Anthemis, Farhan was a Partner at Rokk3r Labs, a global venture builder building out their international presence. He was also an executive at PeerIndex, a social media analytics platform that was acquired by Brandwatch in 2014, Yahoo! and various other startups and later-stage private companies.

    Farhan holds an undergraduate degree from McMaster University in Canada and an MBA from London Business School. When he is not geeking out on technology trends and their impact on society he’s listening to old school hip hop and watching or reading about NBA basketball.