Mar 8, 2023

BGF has completed a follow-on investment in Desana , a leading B2B global hybrid workspace platform as part of a $7.4m funding round. The round was co-led by European focussed PropTech specialist investor PT1 – PropTech1 Ventures and JLL Spark , alongside existing backers BGF, Groundbreak Ventures and Techstart Ventures . As a result of the unprecedented global shift to new ways of working, Edinburgh-based Desana has seen rapid growth since launching in 2019, now offering employers on-demand access to workspace in over 600 cities across more than 60 countries, with their team spread across the UK, USA and Canada. BGF has backed the business since June 2021, when the company raised $4 million from a consortium of international investors to fast-track growth in the face of overwhelming market demand. This latest investment round is set to accelerate continued global growth, particularly in the US, where they see significant opportunity to expand their already impressive list of enterprise customers, which includes Github, Twilio, Sonos, Elastic and Splunk, amongst others. Driving demand for Desana’s global offering is the ability for employers to consolidate expensive fixed-office real estate commitments, reducing workspace overheads by 65% – 95%; a critical benefit when costs are soaring and office space continues to be one of the highest business expenses. The consolidation of real estate commitments is enabled by giving customers immediate access to the entire global flexible workspace market, on-demand, through a single interface. For the first time, companies are able to provide their employees with access to workspace anywhere in the world, in one simple click, while only paying for the exact hours that workspace is used. Companies can also integrate their own offices onto the platform, offering a single solution to the complex task of managing global hybrid working patterns and allowing the tracking of accurate workspace data to support long-term real estate decisions. Desana offers an immediate solution to the universal corporate challenge of how to deliver hybrid and flexible working cultures at scale, as well as enabling the remote hiring strategies so in-demand from employees. Michael Cockburn, CEO and Co-Founder of Desana commented: “We’ve come a long way from launching our initial product from our living rooms in Edinburgh, to working at a global scale with some of the biggest companies in the world as they fundamentally rethink the way they utilise office space. We established Desana ahead of one of the biggest shifts in working culture for generations, and this unprecedented transition has driven a huge amount of growth for us. But, given the scale of the change in this industry, we believe that there’s still so much more to come. We’re very grateful to have such experienced investors that share our vision for the future of work. We’re all super excited to accelerate our growth trajectory and continue to empower companies by providing a way to use real estate that is good for their people, their business, and the planet.” Fiona Dornan , investor at BGF, said: “We’re delighted to be providing further funding to Desana – an incredibly exciting Scottish proptech business that is responding to the global opportunities associated with hybrid working. Providing long-term, strategic support to the businesses we back is part of our DNA and so we look forward to supporting the management team as they move towards their next stage of growth.” Business funding news Head of Sustainable Finance, Capital Markets Claire is responsible for leading the portfolio of sustainable finance related projects across London Stock Exchange Group’s Capital Markets business which includes equities, fixed income and ETFs. Claire has played an important role in the development of model ESG disclosure and reporting guidance for London Stock Exchange listed companies and initiatives such as an ESG Disclosure Tool, the publication of a guide to green finance and Green Economy Mark for AIM and Main Market companies. Claire’s background is in the fund management industry and in equity capital markets, working with private and listed companies. Claire is a member of an industry Taskforce on the Scaling of Voluntary Carbon Markets. Positioned at the heart of global financial markets, LSEG works across the investment and finance chain from issuers to asset owners, and across the financial, banking, trading and advisory ecosystem. As such LSEG is uniquely positioned to support clients in achieving the transition to a sustainable and net-zero economy and was the first exchange group to commit to net zero emissions. Claire Dorrian will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep CEO Commercial Bank. Natwest Group Paul Thwaite was appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Commercial and Institutional customer franchise in July 2022. He is responsible for the teams within the ring fenced bank that support business customers, ranging from start-ups through to multi-nationals. Alongside his role as CEO, Paul is also the executive accountable for the Group’s Payments business. Paul has a track record of success in senior business and functional roles across Wholesale, Corporate, International and Retail Banking for the Group, and was most recently responsible for Commercial Banking, which included leading the Group’s response to supporting UK business customers through the Covid pandemic. Prior to this, he held Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer roles in International Banking, based in the UK and the US, working across multiple geographies. He also takes an active role in equality and inclusion initiatives, and actively drives a number of targeted D&I programmes across the Group. Outside the bank Paul holds a number of Financial Services advisory and non-executive roles, and is a member of the Whitehall Industry Group and the UK Government’s Business Finance Council. Paul Thwaite will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 22Sep Chairman, Cornerstone Partner Rodney Appiah is a former investment banker, NED and VC investor with more than 15 years of financial services experience across UK and Europe. He is currently Managing Partner at Cornerstone VC, an early stage fund focused on a ‘people first’ investment strategy, investing at pre-seed and seed stage in UK technology businesses led by diverse founding teams. An experienced board director, Rodney is a Non Executive Director of the UK Business Angels Association (UKBAA), the UK trade body for angel and early stage investing, and Conduit Connect, a direct investment platform that focuses on connecting global high impact businesses with mission aligned investors. Rodney also holds committee roles at Innovate UK (Innovation Loans Credit Committee), Lloyds Banking Group (Black Business Advisory Committee) and the London Chamber of Commerce (Black Business Association). Rodney Appiah will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep Co-founder, OLIO A digitally native CEO and now startup founder who thrives in challenging environments, and has a strong track record of driving change. Uses excellent strategic ability to get alignment around a vision, and combines this with a collaborative but firm approach to inspire cross functional teams to (over) deliver. Not afraid to challenge the status quo. Experience includes startups, digital transformation, managing for high growth, global expansion, turnaround, acquisition and integration. Worked in both B2C and B2B across retail, media, events, and financial services, in the UK and globally. Passionate about sustainability, the circular economy and zero waste. A strong proponent of businesses that combine profit with purpose. Andy Shovel Founder & Co-CEO, THIS Andy Shovel is a British entrepreneur and co-founder of THIS – a plant-based, hyper-realistic meat alternative. Since launching in June 2019, THIS is now one of the fastest-growing UK plant-based meat start-ups. The alt-meat brand has recorded a 530% year-on-year growth, representing one of the highest growth rates ever for a British food brand. Nicolas Moreau Nicolas Moreau joined HSBC Asset Management in September 2019. Nicolas has 30 years of experience in the asset management and insurance industries. Before this appointment, Nicolas spent two years at Deutsche Bank as the Management Board member responsible for Deutsche Asset Management. As the Global CEO, Nicolas led the business to be listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange in March 2018 and rebranded the business to DWS. Previously, Nicolas spent 25 years with AXA Group. He was Chairman and CEO of AXA France and a member of the AXA Group Management Committee, as well as Vice Chairman of the Group Investment Committee. Nicolas has also been CEO of AXA Investment Managers and CEO of AXA UK & Ireland. Nicolas Moreau will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep Head of EMEA & President of the UK branch at Silicon Valley Bank Erin Platts is head of EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa) for SVB UK and president of the UK Branch. She is responsible for leading and developing the bank’s business across the EMEA region. Erin has served SVB UK since 2007. She has a strong background in market and product development, with expertise that includes delivery of bank solutions and debt transactions to technology and life sciences companies and their investors. Before her current role, Erin led the market in Europe as the UK Branch head of relationship banking. She also worked in the Silicon Valley Bank office in Boston before her transition to the UK. Erin is well-connected and an active champion of global innovation. She has been recognized by Management Today in its 35 Women Under 35 list, as well as highlighted in the Innotribe global index report of Power Women in FinTech. Erin earned a bachelor’s degree in business management and entrepreneurial studies from Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Erin Platts will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep CEO, Salesforce, UK&I Zahra is a technology leader and is the Executive Vice President and CEO of Salesforce UK & Ireland. She was appointed in March 2021 to lead the company’s operations across both key growth markets. Prior to this, Zahra spent 22 years at Accenture and most recently Zahra led Accenture Technology in the UK/I for almost four years and served as an executive board member / director on the board of directors. As Technology leader she was a transformative force. She was unrelenting in making the service more market-facing and repositioned the business within the ecosystem, notably with the award-winning Kaleidoscope concept. At the same time, she was personally engaged across a range of clients across automotive, legal, government, banking, energy & life sciences where she was instrumental in some of the most significant client relationships and client transformation activities. During her 22 years, Zahra gained transformation experience across a number of clients and industries including grocery retail, oil and gas, retail banking, healthcare & telecoms. She believes that success comes not only from deep technology expertise, but also an understanding of the value it can bring to customers, employees, partners and anyone involved in its use. Zahra has worked with clients to help define value and achieve it by connecting them to vast ecosystem of technologies, from cloud and ERP platforms to artificial intelligence engines or extended reality. Zahra has pioneered a number of ‘firsts’ – from convening the UK technology ecosystem at the award-winning Kaleidoscope to patented uses of cloud technology for energy industry divestments. Zahra is strong advocate for diversity and inclusion and has held a number of D&I leadership roles globally and within the UK/I. She has written on diversity for publications, including Management Today, Forbes and The Telegraph. She currently sits on the boards of TechUK, Cancer Research UK and Movement to Work. Zahra has been widely recognised throughout her career as an industry leader, including being named as number thirteen in Computer Weekly’s ‘Most Influential 50 People in UK Tech 2022;’ also in Computer Weekly’s “50 Most Influential People in UK Tech 2021,” and Women in IT’s “Woman of the Year – 2019” finalist. Zahra lives between London and Northamptonshire with her husband Stephen and enjoys spinning & running. Zahra Bahrololoumi will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep CEO, ScaleUp Institute Irene is the founding CEO and a board director of the ScaleUp Institute, a private sector, not-for-profit company focused on making the UK the best place in the world to scale up a business. She is a former senior banker at Standard Chartered where she held both European and global managing director roles. She set up, ran and scaled several of the bank’s key client and product businesses across its corporate and institutional bank and led several global M&A activities. During that time at the height of the financial crisis was seconded to work across the banking industry where she lead the Business Finance Taskforce and Better Business Finance which was responsible for, amongst other initiatives, the founding of the Business Growth Fund, SME Finance Monitor, and leading on developments in Open Banking, and the Small Business Act. She is a Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at Strathclyde University and holds a variety of non executive director and advisory roles across the creative, business and finance communities. Irene Graham will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 21Sep CEO, Octopus Energy Greg Jackson is the founder and CEO of Octopus Energy Group, the energy technology group with 3.5 million customers globally, operations in 14 countries and a £3.4bn portfolio of renewable energy assets. Launched in 2016, Octopus Energy’s mission is to bring cheaper, greener power to all through technology. Greg’s vision of using technology to disrupt the energy market has attracted over $1.5 billion worth of funding from international energy companies, large pension funds and global investors, and has valued the company at around $5 billion. Greg is a key thought leader in the UK on issues related to energy transition, energy costs and innovation, especially in energy. Greg built and sold a number of successful businesses before starting Octopus, including Consultant Connect, a telemedicine provider serving 40% of UK doctors, and e-commerce company C360 which built platforms for many large enterprises. He is an angel investor in a wide range of start-ups, including Xlinks, the company building the world’s largest subsea cable that will bring renewable energy from Morocco to the UK and Zopa, the world’s first peer to peer finance company. Greg Jackson will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 22Sep Director General, CBI Tony joined the CBI as Director-General in November 2020. His career spans a range of roles in business, media and government. Before the CBI, Tony was the first CEO of Be the Business, a business-led movement created to transform UK’s productivity founded by a group of FTSE-100 Chairmen and the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne. From 2010-2017 Tony was International Director, then Chief Strategy Officer, at Guardian News & Media. For two years before that, he was a Policy Advisor HM Government (2008-10), joining the Cabinet Office and HM Treasury. Tony’s early career was at McKinsey & Company (1998-2008) in London and Washington DC where he worked for 10 years. Tony Danker will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 21Sep GM & Head of Commercial Banking, HSBC UK Stuart Tait was appointed Head of Commercial Banking UK in December 2021, and is responsible for HSBC’s relationships with 900,000 large, medium and small business clients. He is a general manager at HSBC Group, one of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations with assets of nearly US$3 trillion*. Prior to his current role, Stuart was Regional Head of Commercial Banking for Asia Pacific, the leading international wholesale bank in the region and one of the Group’s fastest-growing franchises. Stuart has worked in financial services for over 30 years. He joined HSBC in 1984 as an International Manager and has held various positions in Commercial Banking, Global Banking and Markets, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Human Resources and Risk. Previous assignments with HSBC have been based in various Asia markets, the Middle East, US, Canada and in the Group’s Head Office. *As of 31 March 2021 Stuart Tait will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 21Sep Forum for the Future Sally oversees Forum for the Future’s mission to accelerate transformation to a just and regenerative future. This involves working with global businesses such as HSBC and Walgreens Boots Alliance, as well as a wide range of other non-profit, membership and philanthropic organisations. This work takes the form of both one to one partnerships and multi-stakeholder collaborations, all designed to address complex challenges in systems as diverse as from food to apparel. Sally has recently contributed to Forum’s ‘Business Transformation Compass’ – a guide to just and regenerative business, as well as co-authored ‘Driving Co-Benefits for Climate and Health’ , private sector guidance for developing integrated climate and health strategies. Sally is a regular speaker at international conferences and has had articles published in a wide variety of media outlets. She is an independent advisor on Advisory Boards for several global businesses including Kimberly Clark and Burberry and also Co-Chair of the Independent Advisory Group for Travalyst, the global travel and tourism collaboration led by the Duke of Sussex. Dr Sally Uren will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep CEO, Learnerbly Founder and CEO of Learnerbly – the workplace learning marketplace. We empower employees through learning stipends to access the very best professional development opportunities based on what they need to lean and how they like to learn (coaching, courses, e-learning, conferences, books, podcasts + more) curated from 250+ of the top L&D providers. We are trusted by some of the world’s most progressive scale-ups and enterprises including King.com, GoCardless, IDEO, Curve, HelloFresh, Bazaarvoice, WeTransfer and many more. With 95%+ employee activation rates and 40-60% monthly engagement (3X+ industry average) across 100+ clients, Learnerbly creates impactful learning cultures for the modern hybrid organization. Prior to Learnerbly Rajeeb founded Enternships.com, a portal that connects students and graduates to work placements in over 7000 start-ups and SMEs, and which developed innovative corporate talent programmes for clients such as Telefonica, Santander and Havas for which he was named the “02 X Young Entrepreneur of the Year” in 2009 and the youngest recipient of the Queen’s Award for Enterprise Promotion in 2013. Rajeeb is also the Co-Founder of StartUp Britain, a national entrepreneurship campaign supported by the government; it was launched by UK Prime Minister David Cameron in March 2011. He served as a Trustee of UnLtd, the Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs for over 10 years, and was recognised as one of the 1,000 Most Influential People in London by The Evening Standard. He graduated with First Class Honours in Economics and Management from the University of Oxford in 2008 and was appointed as the world’s youngest Young Global Leader (at 26) by the World Economic Forum in 2012. Rajeeb is also a contributor for Forbes.com writing on issues such as the leadership, ‘future of work’ (or just work these days! ), and entrepreneurship. Director, Oxford Net Zero Myles Allen is Professor of Geosystem Science in the School of Geography and the Environment and Department of Physics at the University of Oxford, and he is Director of the Oxford Net Zero initiative. He is credited by the BBC with first demonstrating, 15 years ago, the need for ‘Net Zero’ carbon dioxide emissions to stop global warming. His research focuses on how human and natural influences on climate contribute to observed climate change and risks of extreme weather and in quantifying their implications for long-range climate forecasts. He was the Coordinating Lead Author on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Special Report on 1.5 degrees, having served on the IPCC’s 3rd, 4th and 5th Assessments, including the Synthesis Report Core Writing Team in 2014. He proposed the use of Probabilistic Event Attribution to quantify the contribution of human and other external influences on climate to specific individual weather events and leads the www.climateprediction.net/ project, using distributed computing to run the world’s largest ensemble climate modelling experiments. Professor Myles Allen will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 22Sep Founder and former Chief Executive, Good Energy Climate scientist, renewable pioneer, businesswoman, environmental entrepreneur. Juliet Davenport has spent more than 20 years not just advocating for solutions to climate change, but actively creating them. Having achieved degrees in physics and economics, Juliet founded the UK’s first 100% renewable electricity supplier in 2000. An innovator whose contribution to climate action over the last two decades in the UK is significant. Her executive role during this period has been to helm of AIM listed Good Energy Group PLC for, having IPO’ed the company in 2012. Good Energy Group PLC is one of the few profitable energy retailers in the UK and has led a charge in renewable energy and new energy technologies for over 20 years. Juliet Davenport will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep US Economist Carl is a globally recognized expert in entrepreneurship, innovation, and economic growth. He has founded and financed multiple startups, and served in executive positions in the insurance industry, both internationally and domestically. As former CEO of the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s most influential organization promoting entrepreneurship, he was referred to as “The evangelist of entrepreneurship” by The Economist. In 2010 he devised the theory of Expeditionary Economics — the US must anticipate restoring economies after invasions — which became part of US war fighting doctrine. Before his business/investing career, Schramm taught at Johns Hopkins for 16 years. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a trustee of the Templeton World Charities Foundation and a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Schramm earned his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Wisconsin, his law degree from Georgetown, and currently serves as University Professor at Syracuse. He is the recipient of the George Eastman prize and five honorary doctorates. His most recent book is Burn the Business Plan; What Successful Entrepreneurs Really Do. Carl Schramm will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 21Sep Executive Chair, BGF Stephen Welton is Executive Chair of BGF, a role he has held since July 2020, and is responsible for the strategic direction of the company. Before taking on the role of Executive Chairman, Stephen was the founder CEO of BGF between 2011 and 2020. Under Stephen’s leadership, BGF has grown from 1 to 16 offices across the UK and Ireland, with more than £2.2bn invested and a team of 170, becoming in the process the most active growth capital investor in the UK. Stephen has extensive experience as an investor. Prior to BGF, he was one of the founding partners of the global private equity firm CCMP Capital (formerly JP Morgan Partners), and before that, Managing Director of Barclays Private Equity and Henderson Ventures, which he also co-founded. In 2013, Stephen was appointed an advisor to the UK Government regarding the establishment of the British Business Bank and in 2017, served as a member of the Industry Panel advising HM Treasury on the Patient Capital Review and is currently a member of the Prime Minister’s Business Council. In 2018, Stephen was appointed a member of the first Council of Innovate UK, which forms an integral part of UK Research and Innovation. Stephen is also a member of the Diversity Project Advisory Board. Stephen has served as an independent director on a broad range of companies over many years, both in the UK and internationally, and joined the board of FTSE 250 Intermediate Capital Group plc as a Non-Executive Director in September 2017. Stephen started his career in banking, has a law degree from Durham University and is a qualified Barrister-at-Law. “BGF is operating at the very heart of the UK & Irish economies. We launched with the ambition to become a champion for British business, the most active provider of long-term capital and the first choice investor for ambitious entrepreneurs. I have no doubt that many of the great British companies of the future are already in our portfolio – and we have only just scratched the surface.” Stephen Welton will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep Co-Founder and CEO KNA, Non exec chair Dianomi & Sliide. Mike Kelly is a digital trailblazer and has spent 30+ years successfully growing digital media, advertising and technology businesses. Mike ran AOL’s media business as President, was CEO and President of the Weather Channel and most recently was an investor and Chairman of BGF-backed video ad platform, Unruly. Mike is also the Chair at two current BGF portfolio companies, Dianomi and Sliide and is a board director at Cars.com and Quantcast. Sam Smith Founder and CEO of finnCap Group Plc Sam is founder and CEO of finnCap Group Plc, the leading advisory firm for the business of tomorrow. The sector specialist service offering ranges from ECM and IPO, to Plc strategic advisory, debt advisory, M&A, and private growth capital as well as net-zero and sustainability consultancy services through investment in Energise. finnCap Group comprises finnCap Capital Markets, finnCap Cavendish as a market-leading strategic M&A firm and has a global reach through its membership of Oaklins. Sam actively champions investment for female-led business through the finnCap Ambition Nation: Female leaders series to help create better networks and demystify financial jargon. Sam is also passionate about empowering young people and helping them develop essential life skills. She is spearheading a campaign for entrepreneurship to be integrated into the school curriculum and works with organisations such as YourGamePlan, icanyoucantoo and Modern Muse to help create a fairer foundation for young people, irrespective of their background. Sam Smith will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 20Sep Co-founder, Chairman and CEO at Graphcore Graphcore (graphcore.ai) is a silicon and systems company based in Bristol- UK, that has developed a new type of processor, the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), to accelerate machine learning and AI applications. Since its founding in 2016, Nigel has secured over $700m in funding for the company from some of the world’s leading venture capital and financial firms including Atomico, Baillie Gifford, Fidelity, Merian, OTPP, Schroders, and Sequoia Capital, from major corporations including BMW, Bosch, Dell, Microsoft and Samsung and from eminent Artificial Intelligence innovators. At the company’s most recent funding round in December 2020, Graphcore was valued at $2.8Bn. Nigel has a background as a technology business leader, entrepreneur and engineer having been CEO at two successful VC-backed processor companies XMOS and Picochip (sold to Nasdaq:MSPD, now Intel), a founder of Icera (sold to Nasdaq: NVDA) and VP/GM at Altera (Nasdaq: ALTR, sold to Intel for $17Bn) where he spent over 13 years and was responsible for establishing and building the European business unit that he grew from zero to $500m in annual revenues. Nigel has an extensive network of connections in the global technology industry spanning USA, China, Asia and Europe. He is often called upon to speak at major industry events and has been recognized with numerous industry awards including, Icon of the Year at the Barclays Entrepreneurs Awards and ranked #1 on Business Insiders, 100 most influential people shaping British technology. Nigel has served as a Board Member and Chairman at a number of technology businesses including as non-executive director and head of the technical advisory board at Imagination Technologies PLC, a FTSE LSE listed business, until its acquisition in 2017. Nigel was a founding member of the Princes Trust Technology Leadership group which, with match funding support from the UK Government, was able to raise over £10m for the Princes Trust Charity. Nigel studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Heriot Watt University and is the author on 3 granted patents. Nigel lives in Somerset, UK with his wife and two boys. Nigel Toon will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 21Sep CEO, Centre for Net Zero Lucy Yu is CEO at Centre for Net Zero, an impact-driven research unit focused on delivering a fast, fair and affordable energy transition. The Centre was founded by Octopus Energy in 2021. Lucy has 20 years of experience in technology, policy and regulation. She has led teams in the UK government’s Cabinet Office, Department for Transport, and Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV), and at the UN’s International Telecommunication Union. Her work has focused on future mobility and cities; sustainability and renewable energy; and AI, data, and digital technologies. She has written extensively on these topics for the tech press and peer-reviewed journals, and has spoken widely including for Wired and SLUSH. Outside government she has run operations, public policy, research and strategy functions for some of Europe’s brightest startups including SwiftKey (artificial intelligence); Voi Technology (micromobility); Cucumber (software development); and Five (autonomous vehicles). She has been named a Financial Times Top 100 Most Influential BAME Leader in tech (2019) and a Diversity UK Top 100 Asian Star in UK Tech and Top 5 Star in GreenTech (2021). Lucy is a Non-Executive Director at the Connected Places Catapult, the UK’s national accelerator for cities, transport and places; and an Associate Fellow of Technology and Public Policy at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change. She is a trained scientist and holds a degree in chemistry from Imperial College specialising in computational and physical chemistry. Lucy Yu will be hosting Scaleup week sessions: 22Sep