Investing
I am a Partner at RTP Global, a global early-stage venture capital firm investing from a $1bn self-funded fund, with teams in Europe, the US and India. I invest on the European team and work out of Amsterdam, London and New York. I am also the firm’s Chief Technology Officer: I built the data and intelligence platform we use to find founders, run deals and support portfolio companies, so the way we source and decide is itself a product I own.
Stage
Pre-seed and seed, and sometimes an A round. That means the first cheque for a team with a prototype and conviction, the first institutional round once a product is in the hands of early users, and occasionally the round that funds the go-to-market engine. I lead or co-lead, and I like to be the first call when something goes wrong, not only when something goes right.
What I invest in
In one line: anything that is or can be big on GitHub, and any startup going after a line item on the price list of IBM, Oracle or SAP.
- Enterprise software. Systems of record and systems of action for large organisations, sold to the people who run them.
- Cyber: security, intelligence, defence. Securing and defending organisations, and the data and intelligence tooling around that.
- Developer and cloud tooling. Tools for the people who build software: developer tools, infrastructure software, data and AI infrastructure, open source with a commercial model.
- Critical infrastructure and global resilience. Software and hardware for the systems a country or an economy cannot do without: energy, industry, logistics, robotics.
- Fintech infrastructure. The plumbing behind financial services rather than the consumer app. I spent ten years at Backbase building digital banking software for over a hundred banks, so I know how this is bought.
Recent investments I have been part of include Ahead Health, All3, emma and Fever Energy. The current list is on the RTP portfolio page.
What I look for
I was a founder and an operator before I was an investor, and I look for what I have seen work from the inside:
- A founder who ships. Execution speed is the single most reliable signal at seed. If the planning unit is days rather than quarters, I pay attention.
- Technical depth sold to a real buyer. Deep tech is not enough; I want to see that the team understands who signs the contract and why.
- A wedge into a budget that already exists. The best enterprise companies replace a line item before they create one.
- Evidence over narrative. I run the firm’s data and intelligence capability, so by the time we meet I will have done my homework on the market, the code and the team. I expect the same of founders.
How I work with founders
Product, go-to-market and enterprise sales are where I have spent most of my career, so that is where I am most useful: the first ten enterprise customers, pricing and packaging, building the product and engineering organisation, and the hard conversations about pivots and people. I am hands-on and reachable, and I would rather hear about a problem the day it happens than in a board deck a quarter later.
How to reach me
A short message on LinkedIn with what you are building and why now is enough. A warm introduction helps but is not required. If it is not for me, I will say so quickly and, where I can, point you to who it is for.