Creator Fund Class of 2020
Creator Fund is the first pan-European student-led VC fund. Europe has the best universities on the planet, and we believe that the next great startups are being dreamed up right now by students in laboratories, class rooms and lecture halls across the continent.
We’ve built Creator Fund to find them.
The best person to support student founders is not an outside investor that suddenly appears on campus at a one-off event. It’s the classmate working with them in the lab, sitting next to them in the lecture hall or discussing ideas late into the night in their flat.
That’s why we have built a team of some of the UK’s smartest students to identify, support, and invest in student startups across UK universities. We are thrilled to introduce you to our Creator Fund Class of 2020.
For every startup we invest in, we want to have someone on our team with relevant deep commercial and technical knowledge. That’s why we have a PhD in machine learning at Oxford, a PHD in Chemistry from Cambridge, MBAs at LBS who’ve founded their own global businesses companies and more that have worked at some of the UK’s leading VCs. Our student investor at UCL has also been recognised as one of the top student leaders in the UK.
Our team hails from 6 different nationalities. We have built this team to bring the greatest diversity of perspective, experience, and background together around one investment committee table.
We believe such diversity of perspective is key, giving us the ability to not only source, understand and diligence the most exciting student ventures, but also effectively support them post-investment. Unlike other funds, as we’re all students ourselves, we also understand everything that our founders going through — whether its living on quick-cook noodles for weeks on end or having to balance your degree with your business, we’re here to support you on this journey.
Our Student Investors
Anna Briggs — LBS, MBA
Anna has deep experience in the retail industry, having held operations and expansion roles at venture-backed startups in the US in New York and Austin. Currently, she is interning at Kindred Capital, one of London’s top Seed-stage VCs and previously interned at FirstMinute Capital, focusing on B2C and marketplace startups across sectors including fashion, social media, travel and gaming. She is passionate about businesses that are a force for good and is on the Executive Committee of the LBS Social Impact Club.
Toyosi Ogedengbe — Oxford, MBA
Toyosi is an angel investor, entrepreneur and venture developer with 10+ years of professional experience. His core expertise is in strategy development and operational improvement gained from a career in consulting, where he served a wide range of FTSE and NYSE companies. More recently, Toyosi co-founded a deal-sourcing startup that connects start-ups and scale-ups in Africa to private investors. He also acts as an Advisor to a number of early-stage ventures on the continent.
Dev Majumder — LBS, MBA.
Dev brings over 13 years of experience of working in large Fortune-100 companies (BP, Honeywell, ExxonMobil). In his previous roles, Dev led R&D innovations and scale-up of new technologies in the energy, chemicals, renewables, and sustainability sectors, and managed multifunctional teams in the USA and UK. His most recent role was as Technology Team Leader at BP. Dev holds a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University and 14 patents in energy, chemicals, and renewable chemical process technologies.
Nina Warner — Cambridge, PhD.
Nina is the President of the Cambridge Entrepreneurs Society, which since 1999 has awarded more than £600,000 in prize money to 60 startups who’ve raised over £300m. Previously she conducted research at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles, Boston’s Children’s Hospital and Pomona University. She is also currently working on a disruptive startup in the beauty industry.
Alessandro Masante — LSE, Accounting and Finance Undegraduate
Alessandro led ESS Venture’s dealflow sourcing in the Italian region and previously interned with boutique financial advisory firm Kon Group and at Banca Mediolanum. He has since headed up VC relations at LSE’s Venture Capital Society and is deeply embedded across the LSE startup scene.
Marc Moesser — Oxford, PhD
Marc is an Ideas 2 Impact fellow at the Saïd Business School and the co-founder of the Oxford Venture Capital Network, focused on connecting stakeholders of the startup scene in Oxford and beyond. Previously, Marc interned as a management consultant at EY-Parthenon in Munich where he focused on the Life-science sector. He holds a MSc. in Biological Chemistry from ETH Zurich and a BSc. in Biochemistry from Heidelberg University and in his current studies is developing novel machine learning methods for the early stage drug discovery pipeline. As an investor, Marc is especially interested in supporting Biotech and Deep Tech startups.
Lucy Wood — King’s, Neuroscience Undergraduate
Lucy is currently a member of the King’s Accelerator team where she runs a year-long workshop course for 300+ students a year that equips them with the skills and support to create their own early-stage start-ups. She also holds a Growth role at the high-growth AdTech startup Fanbytes and her investing interests lie in Healthtech, Neuroscience and mental health.
Mason Sinclair — Cambridge, MBA
Mason founded and ran his own venture-backed startup, The Inspiration Lab, in South Africa before moving to the UK to work for the VC fund Newable, where he was responsible for coordinating all deal origination, due diligence and investment committees. He was also previously Entrepreneur in Residence at JoziHub, a partnership with Google for Entrepreneurs, where advised and mentored startups. He also holds bachelors in both Biomedical Engineering and Electrical Engineering and is passionate about deep science technology ventures.
Massamba Senghore — UCL, Economics Undergraduate
Masamba is the Director of the UCLE VC Fund where he and his team provide capital to the most promising startups emerging from the university. He is also the Investment Officer at Bloomsbury Capital, leading UCL’s largest investment fund. Prior to this, Masamba co-founded and managed a clothing brand, built online retail stores and ran marketing campaigns for multiple brands. He has also accumulated experience within asset management and consulting. He was recently recognised by the Future Leaders Magazine at #6 of the most promising 150 BME undergrads in the UK.
Joe Brown — Oxford, PhD
Joe helped to launch Moonshot Launchpad, an innovation programme at UCL to create a vibrant community of young founders and support early-stage student-led start-ups. He has since had summer experience consulting and as a software developer for Deutsche Bank. He holds a BSc in Mathematics and Physics and a MSc in Machine Learning from Imperial and his current research focuses on how machine learning can be applied to the energy industry to reduce carbon emissions.
