#US
#Investor
#LP

Scott Sandell is Managing General Partner at NEA. A General Partner since 2000, and Co-Managing General Partner from 2015 - 2017, Scott served as head of the firm’s technology investing practice for 10 years and has led NEA’s China investing activities for over a decade. Since joining the firm in 1996, he has personally led investments in industry-transforming companies like Bloom Energy, Data Domain, Fusion-io, Salesforce.com, Tableau Software, WebEx, and Workday. Scott is one of only four investors named to the Forbes Midas List every year since 2007, with 24 technology companies in his portfolio having successfully completed public offerings or mergers.

Scott is currently a director of Bloom Energy (NYSE: BE) and a number of private companies including Automation Anywhere, Branch, Cloudflare, Coursera, Enigma, Expanse (fka Qadium), Hello Alfred, One Concern, Robinhood, Sentons, Transfix, and WaterBit. Other previous investments include Fusion-io (acquired by SanDisk), Neoteris (acquired by Juniper Networks), NetIQ (acquired by Attachmate Corporation), Playdom (acquired by Disney), and Spreadtrum Communications (acquired by Tsinghua Unigroup).

Prior to joining NEA, Scott was a Product Manager at Microsoft, where he worked on Windows 95. Before joining Microsoft, Scott was the first salesperson at C-ATS Software and later co-founded and ran the company’s European subsidiary. He began his career at the Boston Consulting Group. Scott holds an MBA from Stanford and an AB in Engineering Sciences from Dartmouth College.

Scott also serves on the Board of Advisors for the Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth and is a former Chairman of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) (2014-2015).

#UK
#Investor
#CVC Track

Pratima Aiyagari joined Cisco Investments in 2011 and is responsible for investments and acquisitions in the EMEA region with a specific focus on ML/AI, Enterprise Collaboration and Silicon. In this role, she also serves as Cisco’s board observer on several portfolio companies. Prior to her current role, she has over a decade of experience in multiple roles as a Cisco engineer in the US (in the areas of network management, access routing and advanced services), sell-side equity research in Europe covering the TMT sector (at Société Générale) and corporate development at a startup.
Pratima received her MBA from INSEAD in France and an MS in computer science from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in the US. Pratima is a co-author of a US patent in the area of network device clusters and high availability.

#FI
#startup
#Funding & Founding

Jaajo Linnonmaa is a 9-time Radio Host of the Year in Finland. A Primetime TV-host of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? He is also an actor in a TV-series and has played leading roles in a few box office movies. Linnonmaa is a business investor and known and awarded for his work in helping young entrepreneurs. He is co-founder of many companies like MySoda. But still Wikipedia says that he is a tech entrepreneur?

#SE
#Investor
#AI & Data

Christian Guttmann is a German-Australian scientist and entrepreneur in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Data Science. He is currently the vice president, global head of Artificial Intelligence and Chief Artificial Intelligence and Data Scientist at Tieto (a top 100 leading IT company according to Thomson Reuters). vAt Tieto, he is responsible for strategy and execution of Artificial Intelligence and Innovation. He is an adjunct associate professor at the University of New South Wales, Australia and Adjunct researcher at the Karolinska Institute, Sweden.Guttmann is an entrepreneur, and co-founded startups where he led the business and product development using Artificial Intelligence technology. He has edited and written 7 books, over 50 publications and 4 patents in the field of Artificial Intelligence. He is a keynote speaker at international events, including the International Council for Information Technology (ICA) in Government Administration and CeBIT and is frequently cited by Nordic and international media, such as the MIT Sloan Management review and Bloomberg.

Hekla is a General Partner at Crowberry Capital, a Nordic venture fund at the forefront of technology growth. As a seed and early stage investor, Hekla has backed many tech startups and worked closely with the founders on funding strategies, product and team development.

Hekla joined a health tech startup right after graduation in Mechanical Engineering. Emphasis on innovation was a key to the company’s success and during Hekla‘s time at Ossur (www.ossur.com) the company grew into an international leader in its field, developing breakthrough products helping amputees gain better mobility. Roles at Ossur included leading product testing in R&D and product management. She moved to Hong Kong and then Shanghai to set up Ossur offices for the Asia region, hiring a local team and passing along the company culture to new employees in the region.

James is a Managing Partner at 3B Ventures, focusing on investing in innovation that can impact the lives of the next 3 billion. Also the founder the Global Startup Awards, a pan-regional startup competition that recognizes entrepreneurs and their respective supporting ecosystems around the world, and co-founded the award-winning startup incubator Rockstart Accelerator in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

As a seasoned board member, most recently with Louisiana State University (LSU), James has also served on the management team and a personal mentor for a number of startups that have gone on to raise significant funding and global traction, recently with the award-winning AIRTAME wireless HDMI streaming device that became the most publicly backed crowdfunded project in Europe on Indiegogo of all time.

James has more than a decade of entrepreneurial experience working with startups and alongside corporations like Samsung, and public organizations such as the Saïd Business School at Oxford University and the Kauffman Foundation to develop innovation & strategy workshops as well as lecture and keynote on entrepreneurial techniques with a focus on ‘lean’ methodologies and social innovation.

Joerg is one of APX Axel Springer and Porsche's Managing Directors, Europe's most ambitious early-stage VC and tailor-made program. Back in 2013, Joerg joined the Axel Springer Plug & Play team as its new CEO.
He started his first company denkwerk while studying Business Administration in Cologne in 1994. In 1999 he co-founded alando.de AG which he and his co-founders sold to eBay Inc. after 6 months. Until 2004 Joerg worked as managing director at eBay and helped to grow the company from 6 person startup to one of Germany's most successful e-commerce companies with more than €500 Mio of revenue.
After his time at eBay Joerg took a parental leave to be with his wife and his twin sons for several months. In 2005 he started M10 Partners together with his business partner. They have invested in numerous Startups and have worked with several companies over the last 9 years.
In 2008 Joerg co-founded betterplace.org the transparent online donation platform and non-profit organization. More than 6,000 projects already use their free technology and advice and more than 470.000 donors have contributed.
Joerg has worked with more than a hundred startups as shareholder and mentor at Axel Springer Plug and Play, M10 GmbH, hub:raum, Startupbootcamp, Startup Institute and as a member of the faculty at the Humboldt Viadrina School of Governance. Together with two friends, he published SimplySeven.net in 2012 - a book about internet business models. In 2014 Joerg is a co-founder of Unternehmerschule at ESCP.
Creating opportunities for success and bringing out the best in people is what Joerg is doing for the companies at APX. Friendly and direct is how he likes to work with our companies.
In his off the grid moments Joerg spends time with his family, likes traveling, loves being outdoors, plays the drums and collects knowledge and gadgets.