Startup Ignite

Brady Forrest is Chair for O’Reilly’s Where 2.0. Additionally, he co-Chairs Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco and NYC. Brady writes for O’Reilly Radar tracking changes in technology. He previously worked at Microsoft on Live Search (he came to Microsoft when it acquired MongoMusic). Brady lives in Seattle, where he builds cars for Burning Man and runs Ignite. You can track his web travels at Truffle Honey.

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In 2002 Lukasz Gadowski founded Spreadshirt.com (currently ~300 employees worldwide, backed by Accel Europe) and was the co-founder of the Social Network “StudiVZ” (sold to Holtzbrinck in 2007, today Germanies largest website). At the beginning of 2008 Gadowski moved from the Spreadshirt Board of Directors to the Supervisory Board, where he is now chairman.

Lukasz is an active internet investor since 2006 and has a portfolio of over 60 internet companies across geographies and stages (for example imagekind.com, rapleaf.com, panfu.de, zlio.com, dawanda.de, amiando.com, imedo.de, toksta.com, apomio.de, epuls.pl, netzathleten.de).

Since 2007 he was involved in the creation of numerous Internet companies, for example Brands4Friends.com, MisterSpex.com, Absolventa.com, Triphunter.com, Playnik.com as well as Kaeuferportal.de. For these ventures Oliver Jung (AdInvest, Zürich) is an important partner.

In September 2008 Lukasz launched ‘Team Europe Ventures’ which combines his existing portfolio. Within the new entity he plans to scale and expand his activities – among other towards investments in later stages and more international focus.

Lukasz was born in Poland and grew up in Germany. Today he lives in Berlin.

For more information about Lukasz and Team Europe Ventures, please visit the web site www.teameurope.net.

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TechCrunch UK & Ireland is edited by Mike Butcher, a former editor of New Media Age magazine, and The Industry Standard Europe. He has written for UK national newspapers including the The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and magazines including The New Statesman. He has launched or relanched several media web sites and in 2004 he was voted ‘One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade’ by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. He has appeared on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg, commenting on technology and new media.

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Christophe has more than 15 years entrepreneurial and investing track record in Media- and Mobile communications-related technology areas. He has consistently delivered product innovation and has led the build-up of disruptive businesses (through both up- and downturns).

In 2000, Christophe founded and co-headed gate5 AG, the Berlin-based pioneer in mobile mapping & community service before selling the company to Nokia in late 2006. He led the company through multiple phases of venture financing and in turn grew gate5 to Euro 18 Mio in sales. As head of Maps and Explore, Christophe contributed to grow a very successful worldwide service business for Nokia (Ovi Maps). The former gate5 unit today employs more than 300 highly qualified developers in Berlin alone.

Before that, Christophe led Filmstudio Babelsberg FX Center, one of Europe’s largest digital media production venture at the time, raising equity from Bertelsmann, Vivendi and Deutsche Telekom. He also initiated Cyber-Cinema, the first European network of electronic cinema venues and co-founded 20/20 Vision, a Film production company focusing on feature films made in Europe and emerging countries. Christophe started his professional life as innovation & product design manager for Toto K.K. in Tokyo, Japan.

Christophe is one of the founders of Atlantic Ventures, a small outfit specializing in booting-up companies and supporting audacious entrepreneurs. Past and current engagements include, SoundCloud.com (Lead), StudentSN.com (Lead), Txtr.com (Lead), PlayAll.com (Lead), TooStep.com (joint lead with Accel India), Brands4Friends.de (co-invest only), StudiVZ.de (co-invest only, sold to Holtzbrinck) and Plazes.com (Lead, sold to Nokia). Christophe is on the board of European start-up organisation www.seedcamp.com and of the alternative investment fund Berlin Atlantic http://www.berlinatlantic.de/.

A Swiss citizen based in Berlin, he studied business at the Universities of St. Gallen and Barcelona and attended executive education curriculum in New York University and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.