Mosaic Companies
AI Applications: Parloa, Veriff, Auterion, Nexar, Inflection.ai, Manas.ai, Mavenoid, Async, Nous. Exited: Shipamax (WiseTech)
Other themes: Blockstream, Clue, Docker, GetGround, Klang, Lightyear, Multichain, Zoe. Exited: Convoy (Flexport), Enfore, Lyvly (London Shared Ltd), Bonify (Schufa)
Pre-Mosaic Companies
Squarespace (IPO), Etsy (IPO), Fotolia (Adobe), MyHeritage (Francisco Partners), ResearchGate, Appcard, Seeking Alpha, Shapeways (IPO), Knewton (Wiley)
Hi, I'm Simon. I was born in London to a family of second generation immigrant entrepreneurs – folks who came to Britain in some instances as refugees, and on whose shoulders I stand.
I moved to the US for grad school (in political thought and philosophy) aged 21, just as the web was emerging, and stayed for over a decade. An early adopter of online services, I downloaded Netscape’s Mosaic, the first browser, in 1993, and began surfing the web with a 14.4k modem. It was an epiphany. After another stint at grad school earning an MBA, I headed west to Silicon Valley, the epicentre of the Internet ecosystem.
From 1996-2000, I was an early employee at @Home Network, a startup founded in 1995 to pioneer the broadband Internet we take for granted today, where I co-founded @Home’s international efforts. @Home was one of the poster children of the first Internet wave, and flew high post-IPO before crashing due to a byzantine ownership structure and an ill-fated merger with Excite.
After a spell on the beach, my friend and partner Toby Coppel, helped to recruit me to Yahoo! in 2001, where I spent four years as VP Corp Dev in a small team that came together following the dotcom crash. Yahoo! was then the #1 website globally: it was a great platform from which to enter the nascent search and mobile businesses, and double down on commerce, finance, geo/maps, voice, photos, games and many other emerging web “verticals”. It was intellectually fascinating to work alongside a deep bench of world-class talent across such wide-ranging consumer-facing applications, and deliver product to (then) the web’s biggest audience.
As a result of these operating experiences at Silicon Valley darlings, twice-over I am a member of a fantastic diaspora of alumni, represented at many exciting startups today – a huge positive from the creative destruction inherent in our space.
I joined the venture community in 2006, and learnt the business as a partner at Accel in London. This offered a fantastic apprenticeship and platform to forge strong relationships with many entrepreneurs and fellow investors, before co-founding Mosaic in 2014.
Outside the startup world, I love to spend time with my amazing Danish wife and our young family. I also enjoy reading, sharing good food and wine with friends, and nature.