Philipp Stangl

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Philipp has been working in leading roles in the startup world for many years. Previously as a co-founder and COO at food e-commerce company KochAbo, which was acquired by Marley Spoon, as well as head of pre-seed at Speedinvest where he invested in 40 companies in >10 countries with his team. Currently, he is the co-founder and CEO at Rebel Meat, a mission-driven food company on a mission to help people eat less but better meat.

Barbara Belvisi

FOUNDER & CEO

Barbara Belvisi is Founder of Interstellar Lab, a space tech company building bioregenerative villages for humans to live sustainably in on any planet. She started her career at 23 as an investor, raised over $80M and participated in 40 deals. At 28, she helped launch The Family, a Paris-based incubator and Hello Tomorrow, an event fostering scientific innovation. The same year, she founded her own asset management firm which gave birth in 2015 to Hardware Club. A $50M hybrid fund dedicated robotics and hardware startups with over 400 startups worldwide.
Youngest women founder of a venture capital fund in Europe, she is in the top 10Women in Tech in France in 2018 and in the world top 100 of Forbes 2018.

Chris O'Brien

EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT

Chris O’Brien has been a professional journalist since 1992. Currently, he works as a European Correspondent for VentureBeat, a technology blog based in Silicon Valley. Prior to that, he was a technology reporter at the Los Angeles Times, covering Apple and Silicon Valley. As well as a business columnist at Mercury News. 

Valentina Milanova

Founder

Valentina Milanova is Founder and CEO of Daye. They have developed a pain-relieving tampon, infused with cannabidiol (CBD) extracted from hemp. Going beyond industry standards, the tampons are medically approved and sustainable, and are sold with a subscription model in sync with the customer’s cycle. Daye is transforming a market that is saturated by established players and little innovation, and is still, in some sense, taboo.

Rytis Vitkauskas

Partner

Rytis joined Lightspeed in 2019 to help build out the firm’s European presence and global platform alongside partners in India, Israel and China. He’s been part of the European tech scene as either entrepreneur, venture or angel investor for over a dozen years.

Ted Persson

Partner

Ted is a Stockholm based digital entrepreneur, product designer, marketer and struggling beard grower. Ted was part of getting new European VC EQT Ventures off the ground, and now works there as a Design Partner. In this role, he works with deal sourcing but also helps portfolio companies with product development, story telling, branding and marketing. Ted also advises a bunch of super cool startups, schools and projects.

Previously Ted co-founded a number of digital agencies. Speedway Digital Army (1997), Abel & Baker (1999) and Great Works (2002), since 2014 part of the North Alliance (NOA), Scandinavia’s leading communications and technology network. While at Great Works, Ted also co-founded Our/Vodka, a global vodka made by local people in cities around the world run by Pernod Ricard.

Sofia Hmich

FOUNDER

Sofia is the Founder of Future Positive Capital, a new venture firm seeking Europe’s boldest entrepreneurs who use advances in artificial intelligence, robotics, synthetic biology, genetics, and other deep technologies to solve problems such as feeding the world’s growing population sustainably, tackling climate change and coping with an ageingpopulation. Her investments includes Ynsect – the global leader in alternative protein supply, Meatable, who are pioneering the next generation of lab-grown meat, BioBeats, the world’s first unified computational platform for preventative mental health and What3Words – the global multi-award winning location technology company, providing unique 3-word identifiers for any location.
At the intersection of entrepreneurship and investment, her career has encompassed tech innovation throughout with stints at Index Ventures, Europe’s top venture capital firm, and Deezer, the worldwide digital music service, where she was in charge of international expansion.

Sofia has been recognised by Forbes as “30 Under 30”, by the World Economic Forum as a “Global Shaper and is part of Founders Forum.

Mohammed Sallah

COUNTRY MANAGER

Mohamed has 5+ years of experience in the Digital Industry in Jordan and Egypt in addition to 8+ years of involvement in the Entrepreneurship ecosystem across the MENA region with Startup Grind, TechStars, Seedstars, and many local and international entities.

He has been recognized as a speaker/mentor/judge at several events/competitions including Techstars Startup Weekend, Seedstars, Startup Grind Pakistan, RiseUp Summit, Startups Without Borders Summit, Digital Arabia Network Summit, Startup Grind Global Conference, Techne Summit, Tech5, Adobe World Tour and more. Mo has also been also featured on various media channels like; Bloomberg, BBC World, BBC Arabic, Al Jazeera, Sky News, MBC, AJ+, Al Ghad TV, Roya TV, ONTV, BBC Radio, National Newspaper, and Inc. Magazine.

Alexi Coffey

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Alexi Coffey is cultivating green thumbs and beautifying surroundings with plants. The 29-year-old cofounded Steward, a subscription service that gives data-driven advice on keeping plants alive. Launched in August, the company has roots at NASA’s Ames Research Center. Stewards has raised $500,000 from investors and expects $3 million in 2021 revenue. Alexi is also nominated in Forbes 30 under 30 in 2021 edition.

Edan Kertis

CO-FOUNDER & CEO

Edan Kertis is the CEO and Co-Founder at myQuest, a company that develops training and knowledge sharing solutions for organizations. Edan’s work is focused on helping people thrive through digital learning. To do that, he has created the AFT Learning Model – an innovative model that transforms the way people learn and engage online. The values that lead Edan in his personal and professional life are passion, meaning, and playfulness, and those values are present in any new product or solution he is working on.

Jérôme Wittamer

FOUNDING PARTNER

Jerome has been a tech investor since 1990. Prior to co-founding Expon Capital and investing in a new wave of high impact tech firms (such as Spire.com, Catalyte.io, Pliops.com), he invested early in leading firms such as M-Systems (acquired by SanDisk Corp.), EVS Global (IPO) and participated in the setup and launch of of numerous investment, corporate finance and tech ventures. He focuses today on Deep Tech across AI & Big Data, AgriTech, Climate, Energy, Digital Health and New Space applications. In addition to his investing actitivies, Jerome has been active with several non-profit organizations and served for 4Y as chairman of the Luxembourg Private Equity & Venture Capital Association.

MAREK UNT

STARTUP PR CONSULTANT

Marek Unt is the founder and Start-Up PR Consultant at Unagi PR. He has worked with severel successful brand and now with Unagi PR he aims to help startups and tech companies make sure their message is heard.