Startups webinars – real-time, live and interactive business seminars

Panellists



		Julie Meyer CEO, Ariadne Capital



		An American by birth and a European in spirit, Julie Meyer came to Europe in September 1988, and has set as her mission to build a growth story for the UK and European continent since the days of the opening up of Eastern Europe, and the coming together of the European marketplace with the Masstricht treaty and the early discussions of a common currency. She was fortunate to hear Ronald Cohen speak of the building of a European technology marketplace early in her career, and Croissance Plus in Paris in the late 80’s along with Cohen, Ayn Rand, Martin Luther, Geoffrey Moore, Andy Cunningham, who built Cunningham Communication, and Tom Teichman of Spark Ventures have all been huge influences on Julie. She has 20 years of investment and advisory experience, helping start-up businesses and industry standards to emerge and establish themselves. As Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital, she owns the vision and strategy for Ariadne Capital and the Entrepreneur Country platform. Ariadne is an investment and advisory firm focusing on internet and media deals. Julie is well-known for founding First Tuesday, the largest global network of entrepreneurs, which many credit for igniting the Internet generation in Europe. It was sold for $50 million in cash and shares in July 2000. She has since raised hundreds of millions of pounds in capital for start-ups, in addition to overseeing another $150 million of seed capital found for UK start-ups through First Tuesday. From 1998 to 1999, Julie was part of the team at NewMedia Investors (which in October 1999 became NewMedia Spark, an early stage investment firm) where she helped several companies, including lastminute.com, WGSN and Arc Cores build their teams, raise significant venture capital financing and internationalise. Each of these businesses has had successful exits for their investors. Ariadne Capital is backed by 50 entrepreneurs who founded the firm in 2000 in order to build the market leading companies of the new millennium. Ariadne Capital was an early advisor to Skype and Espotting, two of Europe's biggest VC-backed successes in the early 21st century. She has advised leading companies such as British Telecom, CarPhone Warehouse, EMAP, Morse and Sage, as well as a portfolio of start-ups including Digital Stores, IndependentIP, LogicServe, Monitise, SpinVox and Zopa. She also consulted to Hewlett Packard, Motorola and 3Com early in her career. Named a "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum and one of the top 30 most powerful women in Europe according to the Wall Street Journal, Julie's mission is to back the best entrepreneurs in Europe with global ambitions. She was awarded "Entrepreneur of the Year" by Ernst & Young UK in 2000.