Venture capital firm Amadeus has appointed two new partners in the UK, including seasoned tech entrepreneur and investor Volker Hirsch.
Hirsch and Nick Kingsbury (pictured below) have joined the firm’s team of early-stage venture capital investors in Manchester and London, respectively.
Hirsch’s expertise is in AI and machine learning, human-machine interfaces, enterprise SaaS, autonomous systems, digital health and medical technologies; while Kingsbury’s investment focus will be on cyber security, AI and B2B software businesses.
Anne Glover, CEO of Amadeus, said: “As two of the most respected and seasoned early stage investors in the UK, Nick and Volker’s extensive networks will give Amadeus a great competitive edge.
“They have hit the ground running identifying start-ups with strong growth potential that can benefit from our 21 years of experience.
“Volker’s work as a tech advocate in the North of England also brings us closer to the compelling innovations occurring in that region.”
Hirsch is an entrepreneur who has founded and co-founded seven companies to date. He is currently co-founder of mobile development house Blue Beck, venture partner at EdTech accelerator programme Emerge Education and co-founder of Tech North Advocates.
Starting out as a corporate lawyer in Hamburg, Hirsch left to join one of the world’s first mobile technology incubators in 2000 and, over the next ten years, helped launch some of the earliest services and applications in the mobile space.
As chief strategy officer at Scoreloop, a mobile social gaming platform, he helped it grow to 450 million users at its peak. After its acquisition by BlackBerry in 2011, he served as BlackBerry’s global head of business development – games.
Kingsbury is an international software entrepreneur and venture capitalist who advised on more than 80 investments in eight years during his time at 3i.
Since 2007, he has advised venture capital funds and invested in early-stage companies. He also chaired Accumuli, the AIM-listed cyber security integrator and managed security services provider which was sold to NCC Group for £55 million in 2015.
Kingsbury currently serves as non-executive director for Loot Financial Services and software company Objective Corporation. He is also an advisor to Growthpoint Technology Partners, a US technology investment bank.