INVITATION ONLY
If you have any questions, please contact Gabriel Moreno, Ecosystem Manager ‑ Climate and Sustainability, Enterprise Hub at [email protected].
To celebrate 10 years of the Enterprise Hub connecting innovation expertise with engineering talent, this event will provide fascinating insights on UK-US opportunities from a diverse range of guest speakers. We hope that you can join us for a fireside chat with tech founders followed by networking drinks.
The panel of speakers include unicorn founders, Sherry Coutu CBE (FTSE 100 Non-Exec Director of Pearson and Raspberry Pi, Chair of Workfinder) and Sam Chaudhary (Co-founder, ClassDojo), joined by Dr John Lazar CBE FREng (Chair of Enza Capital, Raspberry Pi Foundation and the Enterprise Committee). They will be discussing their journeys as founders, investors and advisors, as well as sharing key advice for those looking to land and expand in the USA.
The Royal Academy of Engineering Enterprise Hub supports talented entrepreneurs and decision makers to transform breakthrough engineering and scientific innovations into disruptive spinouts, startups and scaleups. GBx Global is a private non-profit community for British founders, tech leaders and investors in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Together we look forward to discussing the UK-US tech ecosystem.
Venue and accessibility
It is very important to the Royal Academy of Engineering that our events are accessible to all. If you have any accessibility requirements, please contact the Events team more than one week in advance of this event so that necessary arrangements can be made. Contact details: [email protected].
Further information about accessibility at Prince Philip House can be found at: https://raeng.org.uk/about-us/accessibility.
Dr John Lazar CBE FREng
John Lazar is co-founder and general partner at Enza Capital, and Chair of the Raspberry Pi Foundation. In 2019, with two partners he co-launched Enza Capital which backs founders and teams using technology to solve large and meaningful problems across Africa. Headquartered in Nairobi, Enza has invested in more than 30 African tech companies to date. John sits on the board of four of Enza’s portfolio companies. As well as being a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, he is also a Fellow of BCS, the UK’s chartered institute for IT. He is chair of the Academy’s Enterprise Committee which oversees the activities of its Enterprise Hub, supporting start-ups and scale-ups across the UK. For the past eight years, he has also been a judge and mentor on the Academy’s Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation, which backs 15-20 early-stage African engineering companies annually. He has also spent many years working on tech-related non-profit initiatives in Africa, especially building “digital blacksmiths” and maker labs. John has also been an active angel investor and technology start-up mentor in the UK and Africa, with more than 40 individual pre-seed/seed investments. In 2016, he stepped down as Chairman and CEO of Metaswitch Networks. He joined the company in 1987 as a software engineer and became Chief Executive Officer, and then Chairman, as the company established its leadership in cloud communications software. Metaswitch was acquired by Microsoft in 2020. He graduated from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar with an M.Sc in Computation and a D.Phil in History. He was awarded a CBE for services to engineering in 2016.
Sam Chaudhary
Sam is the Co-founder of ClassDojo, a global community of more than 50 million teachers and families who come together to share kids’ most important learning moments, in school and at home—through photos, videos, messages, and more. The educational unicorn is valued by Tencent at $1.25bn.
Sherry Coutu CBE
Sherry is a serial entrepreneur, investor and non-exec director of companies, charities and universities. At present, she is a senior independent director at Pearson, Raspberry Pi and Workfinder. Sherry has served on the Board of LinkedIn and as non-exec director at The Royal Society, Cambridge University, the London Stock Exchange plc and Zoopla. Previously, Sherry founded the unicorn Interactive Investor (listed and then acquired by LON:ABDN) and was managing director at ISI Emerging Markets (acquired by LON:ERM).