I am a Trustee of two charities helping education in Africa including OneBillion Learners. I am passionate about using technology as well as money to greatly improve the prospects of all but especially children around the world. I have no hesitation in pledging to give a percentage of my personal investment profits to charity in this and other areas.
Simon is Managing Partner of Episode 1 - a London based VC investing in early stage software driven businesses. Their first fund launched in 2013 is an Enterprise Capital Fund of £37.5m and has invested in companies such as Carwow, Emoov and Triptease. Simon sold his first company BookPages to Amazon in 1998 after which he reported to Jeff Bezos as VP Europe of Amazon.com. In early 2000, Simon founded and ran Chase Episode 1, an early stage European technology VC fund backed by JP Morgan Chase. The fund made over 3x return after all fees and carry despite being a 2000 vintage fund. Chase Episode 1 included investments in BetFair (IPO 2010) and ScanSafe (sold to Cisco 2009). After the fund Simon became a full-time angel investor. His angel portfolio includes/included investments in Shazam, Zoopla (IPO 2014), LoveFilm (sold to Amazon 2011), Shutl (sold to eBay 2013), and Natural Motion (sold to Zynga 2014). In addition, from 2010 to 2012, Simon worked at Octopus Ventures in portfolio development. Simon has a BA in Physics from Cambridge and a PhD in Computer Science and Expert Systems.
