Upscale

Katy Trost is a coach and advisor to tech CEOs in London and New York City. They partner with her to become more effective leaders and build healthy organizations while navigating the challenges of scale. Understanding the responsibilities and challenges that come with serving a company and its people, her mission is to support CEOs at Series B and beyond on their growth journey.

Her clients include companies backed by leading investors, including SoftBank, First Round Capital, Primary Venture Partners, Felix Capital, Octopus Ventures, Inflexion, Maven, and more. Katy is a coach and judge to Tech Nation Future Fifty and Upscale, Octopus Ventures, Founders Forum, Techstars, Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, PwC Fintech, and the Mayor of London Mentoring Program as well as an advisory board member of various startups.

Valentina Kristensen is the Corporate Affairs Director at OakNorth, a leading financial technology company which launched in September 2015. She began working with the business consultancy-side in June 2015, a few months after securing its provisional license, but a few months prior to its official launch, and joined full-time in mid-2016 after being seconded for several months. With oversight of external comms, internal comms, events, content, ESG/sustainability, and OakNorth’s UK CSR/1+1% Commitment, Valentina helps set the strategic direction for stakeholder engagement globally and is an observer on the Bank’s Executive Committee. She is also a Founding Editorial Board member of the Chartered Institute of Public Relations’ multi award-winning member magazine, INFLUENCE; an Adviser to The Entrepreneurs Network – a think tank for the ambitious owners of Britain’s fastest growing businesses and aspirational entrepreneurs; and a Board Advisor to ETA Technologies – a start-up on a mission to empower investors with a sophisticated, quantified, and comprehensive analysis of the teams they plan to invest in. In 2018, she was named in the Standout 35 of Innovate Finance’s Women in Fintech Powerlist.

Tugce is passionate about the power of AI and the positive change it can bring to the world. As a serial entrepreneur, Tugce started a number of AI businesses including Streetbees where she served as the CEO for 8 years. She is currently working on Alchemy, a new dating service that brings executive matchmaking to the masses using GenAI tools to deliver hand-picked matches to its users.

Previously, Tugce was a strategy consultant at EY-Parthenon advising Private Equity houses on M&A and portfolio businesses. Tugce is a published author and a Cambridge economist, focusing on the use of technology to bolster economic development.

Mazdak is CEO and Founder of Avant Arte, a curated marketplace that makes discovering and owning radically more accessible for a new generation. From Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor to Jenny Holzer and George Condo, Avant Arte collaborates with leading contemporary artists to create limited edition sculptures, print editions and digital works, connecting them with the largest community of young art collectors and enthusiasts online. As part of its mission to make art more accessible, Avant Arte collaborates with leading public art institutions including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dia Art Foundation, the National Portrait Gallery and Contemporary Arts Society to raise millions of dollars and create thousands of new patrons to support the work museums do in providing public access to art.

Prior to Avant Arte, Mazdak worked at Rothschild & Co, advising companies on growth strategy, financing and IPOs, before joining leading online music community Boiler Room in 2013 — first as a board member, then as Chief Operating Officer, where he led on strategy and operations, product, marketing and finance, shaping it into the world’s largest online music broadcaster. He is a Trustee of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the London Contemporary Orchestra.

Ivan Mazour is the CEO and Founder of Ometria, a Customer Data and Experience Platform, which helps 200+ fast growing retail brands like Steve Madden, Sephora, Holt Renfrew, Pepe Jeans and Hotel Chocolat better understand and communicate with a billion individual customers. Ometria has raised over $70m in funding from leading global VCs like InfraVia, Octopus, Sonae and Summit, as well as many of London’s leading technology entrepreneurs. Ivan has also invested in over thirty other technology startups, holds degrees in Mathematics from Cambridge University, and in Economics from the Open University, and is a regular public speaker (check out his TEDx talk on why we should all want to share our personal data).

Jean-Laurent Pelissier is a Managing Director and Head of Enterprise Software at HSBC Innovation Banking. He is based in London and is responsible for leading a team which supports venture-backed enterprise software companies with banking and lending solutions. Prior to running the Enterprise Software team, Jean-Laurent led the Strategic Capital team for HSBC Innovation Banking, focusing on providing growth- and late-stage venture debt and mezzanine solutions. He has been supporting the UK and European VC ecosystem for over a decade with experience as both a debt and equity investor. Jean-Laurent holds a BA in Economics and BS in Mathematics from the University of California, Davis, and a MSc Finance from the London School of Economics.

George is the Founder and CEO of Wolf & Badger, the leading platform for independent ethical brands worldwide. Since its participation in Upscale and Future Fifty, George has continued to scale the business into a certified B-Corp and now profitable international retail platform supporting over 2000 independent brands. George has expertise in scaling companies in the US, with this market now the largest for Wolf & Badger. George is a former consultant at PwC and founder of other startups, and is now also an active angel investor.

Perri is the co-founder and CEO of Mastered, a new breed of organisation dedicated to lifelong learning in the creative industries. Over 10 years they’ve supported career development for 6000+ professional creatives from over 95 countries. Their clients include luxury fashion group LVMH, British games developer Sumo Group and artificial intelligence research company Google DeepMind.

Prior to this, she was a commissioning editor at The Guardian and Psychologies magazine and in 2012 she published her first book, Material World (Virgin Books) a guide to craft and the DIY movement, that featured contributions from Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and 100+ others.

She is also a trustee of The Spitz, a charity dedicated to tackling loneliness and isolation through live music.

Dom Hallas is the Executive Director of the Startup Coalition (formerly Coadec), an independent advocacy group that serves as the policy voice for technology-led startups and scale ups in the UK.
Named in 2023 by Politico as one of the ’20 People who matter in UK tech’, he sits on the UK Government’s Digital Economy Council & Tech & Telecoms Trade Advisory Group. He is also a board member of the global tech startup association Allied for Startups.
The Startup Coalition builds proactive coalitions of businesses and investors on issues that are integral to the health of the UK’s startup ecosystem. Recent successes have ranged from the design and establishment of the Future Fund to the creation of new technology-focused visas, the raising of the SEIS limits, and the bailout of SVB UK.

Bradley (Brad) Doline is Of Counsel in the London office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where his practice focuses on advising start-ups and emerging companies, forming and representing private investment funds, and representing investors on their investment activities in a wide range of asset classes.

For his start-up and emerging companies practice, Brad guides companies through the entire company life cycle, from formation to exit strategies, and through the process of securing, negotiating and structuring financing. He regularly advises clients on the establishment of corporate entities and initiation of their business activities, including development of their capital structure, implementation of equity incentive plans, negotiation of employment agreements and protection of intellectual property assets. Brad advises on all forms of funding, including (i) angel and seed round financings, (ii) early, mid and later stage venture capital financing, (iii) asset based and cash flow financing, and (iv) bridge loans and other convertible debt issuances through the use of a variety of investment structures. He also has a particular expertise in representing non-U.S. founders and emerging companies in establishing U.S. holding company structures and accessing the U.S. capital markets.

Brad also represents venture capital funds, strategic investors, angel investors, family offices, and other investors in all aspects of raising and deploying capital in the emerging company and venture capital space. Brad is highly sought after to advise high net worth individuals on cross-border UK-U.S. matters and recognized by Chambers High Net Worth Guide as “a super-smooth operator that clients trust with their most complex issues” (2021), where clients say “[h]e is very detailed and methodical…[and] is just so easy to work with. He knows exactly what I’m thinking, he has deep experience and he is really great at communicating” (2022).

For his fund formation practice, Brad focuses on all areas of professional investment management where his experience in this area includes advising fund sponsors, including first-time fund managers, and international financial institutions on the formation, structuring and ongoing compliance requirements of private investment funds. He counsels clients through the formation, capital raising and investment process where he helps to identify issues, develop practical solutions, and provide an informed view of the market. He regularly advises U.S. and non-U.S. sponsors on the structuring and formation of private investment funds, utilizing a variety of entity forms and targeting investment opportunities on a global basis. Brad is highly recommended for “Private Funds” by Legal 500 UK, with sources noting he is “meticulous with every detail and ahead of the curve in providing solutions to any future issues” (2022).

Brad also has significant experience representing institutional investors with their private fund investment programs with a particular expertise in counseling sovereign entities, including sovereign wealth funds, in connection with the expansion of their investment aims, formation and structuring of their sub-funds and special purposes vehicles, and organization of their cross-border structured investments.

Prior to joining the firm, Brad was a partner at Curtis, Mallet-Prevost, Colt & Mosle LLP and based in its London and New York offices.

Ashmi Bhagani is Of Counsel in the London office of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where she has a diverse transatlantic corporate and securities practice focused on the technology and life sciences sectors.

Ashmi advises emerging companies through all stages of their life cycle, with a particular focus on transformative events, including venture capital and growth financings, acquisitions, IPOs, and other strategic transactions. She also frequently counsels venture capital and other private equity funds on structuring and executing transatlantic investment transactions.

Ashmi has deep experience counseling on cross-border M&A and international equity capital markets transactions and routinely advises on UK/European corporate governance, listing, and securities laws matters.

Prior to joining the firm, Ashmi practised at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP in London.

Lisa is the CEO of Funding Circle, the leading UK small business credit platform, which enables small businesses to borrow, pay and spend. To date the platform has extended more than £16bn to small businesses, supporting hundreds of thousands of jobs. During her time at Funding Circle, as UK Managing Director, she led the UK business through the pandemic becoming one of the largest lenders under the CBILS government loan scheme; and as Chief Strategy Officer she led capital raising from Series C to IPO; and led the company’s international expansion with two acquisitions. Alongside this, she co-founded FinTech women – a quarterly meetup focused on showcasing inspiring women across the fintech landscape and Women@FC.

Prior to Funding Circle, Lisa was a strategy consultant at BCG. She has also worked for NGOs in Tanzania and India. She holds a First Class Degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University. She was recognised in the Inspiring Fifty Europe in 2022 and the Inspiring Fifty UK in 2018. She was named as AltFi’s CEO of the Year 2022 and Fintech Woman of the Year in 2021. She has also been named on the Innovate Finance FinTech PowerList 2017-2023

As Chief Operating Officer of Super Payments, a fintech which is disrupting the payment industry by providing free payments to merchants who then use the savings to give rewards to shoppers, Panni brings extensive experience in technology, product development, hyper scaling and international expansion.
Most recently, Panni was COO at Beauty Pie, a luxury beauty buyers’ club where she was responsible for scaling the business from a traditional beauty start up to a tech enabled powerhouse, raising £100M in its latest round.
At Funding Circle, she was the MD of International, expanding the business into the US, Germany, Netherlands and Spain.
Originally born in Iran and having grown up in the US, Panni holds an MBA from Columbia University. She currently lives in Wandsworth with her family.

Michael is an early-stage VC investor at firstminute capital, a $400m seed fund investing across Europe backed by a network of 130+ unicorn founders. He spends most of his time on looking for outlier-brilliant founders using AI to improve very manual workflows, but also invests across the AI stack. He has led investments and worked closely with companies including Nabla, Klu, Agemo, Resemble, Maihem, Toongether, Claimsorted, Mistral and Granola. He also leads on French investment for the fund. Before firstminute, he spent more than a decade as a journalist, which is unusual in venture and gives him a unique and differentiated perspective. Most recently he was founding editor of Sifted.eu, and before that as a foreign correspondent for the Financial Times. At Sifted, he helped scale the company from an idea to a media platform with a team of 80 journalists and engineers producing world-class, in-depth coverage of the European technology landscape. At the Financial Times, he was senior correspondent and bureau chief in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm and New York. As a foreign correspondent, he interviewed break-through founders, anonymous hackers, rogue traders, presidents, military dictators, global CEOs, and quirky billionaires. He has a first-class degree from Cambridge University.

Perri is the co-founder and CEO of Mastered, a new breed of organisation dedicated to lifelong learning in the creative industries. Over 10 years they’ve supported career development for 6000+ professional creatives from over 95 countries. Their clients include luxury fashion group LVMH, British games developer Sumo Group and artificial intelligence research company Google DeepMind.

Prior to this, she was a commissioning editor at The Guardian and Psychologies magazine and in 2012 she published her first book, Material World (Virgin Books) a guide to craft and the DIY movement, that featured contributions from Grayson Perry, Tracey Emin and 100+ others.

She is also a trustee of The Spitz, a charity dedicated to tackling loneliness and isolation through live music.

George is the Founder and CEO of Wolf & Badger, the leading platform for independent ethical brands worldwide. Since its participation in Upscale and Future Fifty, George has continued to scale the business into a certified B-Corp and now profitable international retail platform supporting over 2000 independent brands. George has expertise in scaling companies in the US, with this market now the largest for Wolf & Badger. George is a former consultant at PwC and founder of other startups, and is now also an active angel investor.

Mazdak is CEO and Founder of Avant Arte, a curated marketplace that makes discovering and owning radically more accessible for a new generation. From Ai Weiwei and Anish Kapoor to Jenny Holzer and George Condo, Avant Arte collaborates with leading contemporary artists to create limited edition sculptures, print editions and digital works, connecting them with the largest community of young art collectors and enthusiasts online. As part of its mission to make art more accessible, Avant Arte collaborates with leading public art institutions including Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Dia Art Foundation, the National Portrait Gallery and Contemporary Arts Society to raise millions of dollars and create thousands of new patrons to support the work museums do in providing public access to art.

Prior to Avant Arte, Mazdak worked at Rothschild & Co, advising companies on growth strategy, financing and IPOs, before joining leading online music community Boiler Room in 2013 — first as a board member, then as Chief Operating Officer, where he led on strategy and operations, product, marketing and finance, shaping it into the world’s largest online music broadcaster. He is a Trustee of the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain and the London Contemporary Orchestra.

“Karen is Chief Investment Officer at Beringea, a transatlantic venture capital firm with more than $900m under management. Karen leads investment strategy for the firm, working closely with its U.S. and European portfolio of more than 60 early-stage companies and sitting on the boards of Luxury Promise, Moonshot, Fnatic, and EDITED.

Karen has been recognised as one of the leading women in venture capital in Europe. She also chairs ESG_VC, an industry-wide initiative to improve ESG performance in venture-backed businesses involving more than 250 funds in the U.K. and Europe, and she leads INSEAD Venture and Entrepreneurship, a network of alumni of INSEAD who are now the foremost investors and entrepreneurs in Europe.

Karen was previously with the Boston Consulting Group and ran the Watch division of Swiss Army/Wenger. She also has experience with start-ups as both a founder and advisor. Karen has lived and worked in the U.S., Europe, and Asia, and has an MBA from INSEAD and a BSBA from Boston University.”