Michael is the co-founder and co-Executive Chairman of Calm, the leading mental health brand with the #1 App for Sleep, Meditation and Relaxation. Calm has grown to over 100 million downloads, was the Apple 2017 app of the year, and is the world’s first mental health unicorn.

Long fascinated by neuroscience, flow states and mental fitness, he is passionate about spreading meditation as a simple but valuable skill around the world.

Prior to Calm, Michael was the founder of Mind Candy, along with Firebox.com, Ping Pong Fight Club, and Berwickstock music festival. In 2014 he was awarded an OBE for services to the Creative Industries.

Melissa Snover is an award-winning entrepreneur and disruptor in the world of food
technology and 3D printing. She is passionate about developing innovations which offer
solutions to her customers, challenge her competitors, and innovate current market offerings.
She is currently the founder and CEO of Rem3dy Health which pioneers personalised
solutions across preventative and curative health under the brands Nourished (Personalised
Nutrition) and Scripted (Personalised Medicine).

Melissa has been a successful entrepreneur for over 15 years, is a registered nutritionist and
the inventor or several new patented technologies. She is a visionary for the use of 3D printing
in mainstream manufacturing on a global scale and recently raised the highest ever female
founder seed round in UK history for Rem3dy. She is an ambassador for women’s equal access
to finance, as well as being an avid supporter and mentor; supporting young people of all
backgrounds to begin studying in STEM fields.

Matthew Scullion is the co-founder and CEO of tech unicorn Matillion.

Having started his career in software and IT, Matthew founded data productivity provider Matillion in 2011 to help struggling companies turn their data into meaningful insights.

Today, Matillion helps thousands of customers across the globe – including Docusign, Western Union, Slack, Tui and Cisco – accelerate their time to insights.

Matthew is also on the Capital Markets Industry Taskforce, and is passionate about helping more UK businesses succeed on home soil.

Matthew lives in Hale, Manchester, with his wife and two daughters, but splits his time between home and Denver, Colorado, Matillion’s joint HQ.

Erin Platts is CEO, HSBC Innovation Banking UK and is responsible for leading, developing and scaling the Bank’s business across the EMEA region. HSBC Innovation Banking business is a full-service UK Bank with all local operations under her leadership. Erin has a strong background in market and product development and delivering upon banking and debt transactions for technology and life sciences companies and their investors.

George joined Sure Valley Ventures in April 2022 as a Principal. He has nearly a decade of experience in the capital markets focusing predominantly on high growth companies. Prior to Sure Valley Ventures, he was an Investment Manager at ACF Investors (an early-stage VC which co-invests alongside domain expert-led syndicates of angel investors) , where he played an active role in investing and portfolio management with early stage companies.

George started his investment career at Shore Capital as an Equity Research Analyst, with a sector focus in Online Retail and eCommerce as well as helping companies IPO. He has also held roles at family office Growth Partner LLP and U.S. based investment firm Aegis Capital Corp.

Sriram is a builder, engineer and podcast host. He invests in crypto/web3 as a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He spent the previous decade working on consumer internet software running product teams at Twitter, Meta and Snap. He also hosts a podcast with his wife Aarthi Ramamurthy covering tech, creators and how people can make it to the “inside”. Sriram’s specialties include product development, strategy, general management, deal structuring and community building.

Brent is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Founders Factory (global venture studios, seed programmes and accelerator programmes), Founders Forum (global community of founders, corporates and tech leaders), and firstminute capital ($320m seed fund with global remit, backed by over 120+ unicorn founders). Previously, Brent co-founded made.com in 2010 which went public last year with a valuation of $1.1bn, and lastminute.com in 1998 where he was CEO from its inception and sold it in 2005 to Sabre for $1.1bn.

Brent has backed nine unicorns at Seed stage and technology businesses Brent has co-founded have raised over $1bn and include Karakuri (provider of robotics, AI and automation systems), Founders Intelligence (entrepreneur-powered consultancy – recently acquired by Accenture), EQL:HER (network taking action to change the underrepresentation of women in technology), Founders Keepers (technology executive search firm), Founders of the Future (network that identifies and supports aspiring entrepreneurs), Founders Pledge (community for entrepreneurs committed to finding and funding solutions to global challenges), Grip (AI-powered event networking solution), 01 Founders (a network of free-to-access coding schools with a job guarantee), Founders Law (full-service tech law firm), Founders Makers (a creative partner for challengers and forward-thinking corporates), and Polygo (graduate talent accelerator).

Brent sits on the advisory boards of Google Cloud, The Tessa Jowell Foundation, the UK Government Digital Service and the WEF Digital Europe Group. He was also a founding Champion of Change for The Global Tech Group, has been an advisor to four UK prime ministers and in 2015 was awarded a CBE for his services to entrepreneurship.

Annette was appointed as Advisor to the Tech Nation Advisory Board in October 2023.

Annette has more than 25 years’ experience working in private equity and venture capital and in that time focused on scaling founder-led businesses. Prior to that she held management roles with LSE listed companies in the insurance industry, having started her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She is a former member of the VC Council of Invest Europe and is a former Board member of the British Venture Capital Association.
Today Annette serves as non-executive director and adviser to several international companies and also is Founder and Chair of the Board of Trustees of ADHD Embrace, a UK registered charity. She is excited about the significant opportunities innovative technological development are playing in the future economic growth. She also is a keen advocate on the topics of impact investing and enabling diversity and inclusion.

Oliver Kent-Braham is the co-founder and co-CEO of Marshmallow, an insurance company powered by technology that supports communities often ignored by traditional insurers. It has been recognised as one of the fastest-growing companies in Europe and was last valued at over $1bn.

Carolyn Dawson is Chief Executive of Founders Forum Group, overseeing all FF events and businesses, and steering the strategic development of our global network. Previously, Carolyn was President at Informa Tech, a FTSE 100 UK company championing specialists in their core markets. Carolyn led a global portfolio of Digital Media, Research, Events, and Training across a variety of technology sectors and presided over the joint venture between Founders Forum and Informa Tech, prior to her assuming her role as FFG CEO.

Carolyn was recently appointed an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire for her services to London Tech Week, which she’s led for the past seven years. In this time, she built its global profile and advanced its mission to showcase the best of UK tech. Carolyn is passionate about growing a dynamic and inclusive tech community to realise the positive impact of technology on our world and to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Tom leads GV (Google Ventures) in Europe. GV has over $8bn in assets under management; Tom’s investments include Lemonade, Multiverse, Stripe, Snyk, Currency Cloud, and Nothing.

Previously, Tom led IDEO’s startup efforts globally, incubating Omada Health and multiple other startups. Tom’s TED talk on design has been viewed over 1.7 million times and he has been recognized as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He has been featured in WIRED UK’s Top 100 Digital Power Brokers and the Evening Standard list of London’s 1000 Most Influential People.

Gerard Grech is the managing director of Founders at the University of Cambridge, a new strategic initiative enabled by Cambridge Enterprise, focused on accelerating the formation and scaling of new knowledge intensive companies.

He is the founder and former Chief Executive of Tech Nation before it was acquired by the Founders Forum Group in 2023. Tech Nation (and previously as Tech City) went on to shape one of Europe’s most productive digital ecosystem, creating dozens of nationwide programs that saw some of Britain’s biggest tech stars participate in; from Monzo to Skyscanner, with over 1300 companies in between. A third of all tech unicorns ever created in the UK’s history graduated from one of Tech Nation’s programs, fuelling a 5x increase in the number of UK cities with a tech unicorn or more and securing the UK’s digital leadership position in Europe. The company was the 9th fastest growing company in the UK public sector in 2022.

He is also a member of the UK Government’s Digital Economy Council and the World Economic Forum’s Digital Board. He was recognised for his outstanding contribution to the FinTech industry at the FinTech Awards London 2023.

Previously, he worked at the intersection of mobile, digital and media in New York, London and Paris, developing and forging ground breaking partnerships and digital products with content and social networks such as Facebook and Warner Music at Nokia, France Telecom, Blackberry and Orange. He started his career in the music business as a journalist.