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NetSuite’s President of EMEA joins Octopus - Pete Daffern to join the Ventures team at Octopus as Venture Partner

Octopus Investments, one of the UK’s leading venture capital investors, today announced that Pete Daffern has joined the Octopus Venture Partner Group. Pete joins Octopus with nearly 25 years executive experience in world-class businesses across San Francisco and the UK, such as NetSuite, ClairMail and Purisma, where roles held included CEO, President and Vice President.

In his role as Venture Partner, Pete will be joining a collection of investors, consultants, entrepreneurs and global experts, who back Octopus portfolio with connections, advice, and hands-on support. Using his wealth of experience of developing and executing Go-To-Market and Product Development strategies, Pete will support portfolio entrepreneurs and management teams, with the aim of helping them reach their growth potential. He will be spending some of his time supporting portfolio companies in the UK and in San Francisco, utilising an extensive network of connections built up over his career to help UK portfolio establish in the US. 

Pete has over two decades of experience in leadership positions at global technology companies across North America and Europe, as well as sitting on the boards of several other businesses in a Non-Executive capacity. He served as the CEO of ClairMail during its acquisition by Monitise, and served as Chairman and CEO of Purisma, which was acquired by Dun & Bradstreet. In his role at NetSuite Pete oversaw business operations in the EMEA region and the Worldwide Global Channel.

Pete joins Debu Purkayastha, Chris Wade and Ian Perry, who are also part of the Octopus Venture Partner Group. They will work together to provide real-life, value-add support to Octopus’ portfolio entrepreneurs.

Alex Macpherson, head of Ventures at Octopus, said of the appointment: “We are delighted to welcome Pete to the team. An incredible leader, Pete brings a fantastic range of skills ands go-to-market strategy experience to the table which will greatly benefit Octopus’ portfolio teams as they tackle their next stages of growth. His knowledge of the US market and established network of contacts will be an invaluable asset to the portfolio. Building world-class teams is about more than just finance, and Pete’s appointment is a great addition to the Octopus Venture Partner Group of support.”

Pete Daffern said: “The London tech investment scene is at a particularly exciting tipping point as we see VCs around the world starting to pay attention to British technology businesses. As the market evolves the best investors will be those providing support beyond finance, and I’ve been incredibly impressed by the hands-on approach Octopus takes to working with their portfolio businesses. I’m very much looking forward to this new challenge.”

Superstar ski sport brand Ruroc closes successful £167,000 funding round with Innovate Finance member Crowd2Fund

UK’s crowdfunding startup Crowd2fund today announced that Ruroc, creators of the world’s first fully integrated ski helmet, goggle and mask, has successfully raised a £167,000 revenue loan with high demand for investment on its platform. Ruroc gained exposure to over 12 million people in the 30-day campaign through its use of Crowd2fund’s platform– making it one of the most successful crowdfunding projects to date for the FinTech company.

 Ruroc, first established in 2010, has a strong presence in the ski marketplace. Its helmets are used by over 20,000 people worldwide and are frequently seen in the Formula One Pit lanes on Sky Sports.

It currently turns over more than £1 million annually and has been experiencing double digit revenue growth year on year.

The company will use the funding to produce a helmet for use across a number of sports including road and mountain biking, as well as a selection of other action sports. Additionally, the funds raised will be used to increase production efficiency, further increasing their international exports.

Commenting on the funding round, Daniel Rees, MD of Ruroc said: “Crowd2Fund’s revenue loan was a massive attraction for us as we are a seasonal business and this offers a much easier solution than making fixed monthly repayments.  It is also a great way to access necessary funds in a short period of time, especially as the banks are often out of touch with how businesses operate.  We needed to access funds at a good rate without the timely and bureaucratic process of using a bank. Happily,  we found that Crowd2Fund not only offered the right product and rates, but that they were also a platform offering a unique way to market and grow our army of ambassadors.”

Rees believes crowdfunding was the most appropriate way to raise funds from the company’s existing evangelists. The revenue loan suits businesses such as Ruroc which are seasonal and require the added repayment flexibility. “We didn’t know we could raise a loan on a crowdfunding platform until we met Crowd2Fund, it was perfect as it meant that we didn’t need to sell company equity,” he said.

Hopper schedules posts to over 18 million Instagram followers within two weeks of launching 

Innovation Birmingham Campus-based Turn Partners Ltd has launched its latest product; Hopper – the world’s first fully automated scheduling tool for Instagram. Within the first two weeks, social media agencies, brands and individuals have scheduled posts to over 18 million unique followers each day.

www.HopperHQ.com is the first tool that enables you to schedule an Instagram post for a specific date and time, in the way that popular applications such as Hootsuite and Buffer enable posts to be scheduled across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. The user friendly platform has the same extensive range of picture editing tools that are available within the Instagram app, as well as enabling pictures to be uploaded from multiple sources, such as Dropbox, Google Drive and a user’s own files.

Turn Partners has spent over six months developing the scheduling technology that enables pictures to be posted at any chosen time and date from a desktop device. Hopper also saves each post in an archive list, with details of how many likes each post has generated.

Mike Bandar, Co-founder of Turn Partners said: “Instagram now has more users than Twitter. It has become an invaluable platform for brands to communicate with a mass audience and engender brand loyalty and sales. Until the launch of Hopper, all Instagram posts had to be made from a smart phone, or tablet in real time. If a brand wanted to post a picture out to its followers on a Sunday evening, there was no option to schedule it in advance.

“With the UK representing only a fraction of Instagram’s user base, we have launched Hopper globally, with the pricing currently set in US Dollars. Through an SEO strategy and targeted marketing, we have already secured over 100 customers to sign-up to either rolling monthly or annual Hopper accounts. While we have won business from a number of UK social media agencies and brands, the majority of our customer base is located in the USA.”

Paul O’Brien, Director of Fresh Face Media said: “Hopper enables us to manage 11 separate client Instagram accounts with ease and efficiency. We previously avoided offering Instagram management, as the overhead was too high, but now it is one of our fastest growth areas.”

Hopper offers three standard packages, with bespoke options available to agencies. The Basic package is priced at $19 per month to schedule posts for one Instagram account with up to 3,000 followers. The Pro package is $37 per month for one Instagram account that can have an unlimited number of followers. The Power package is $90 per month to schedule posts for seven Instagram accounts, each with an unlimited number of followers.

Hopper is one of the tech start-ups currently enrolled on Innovation Birmingham’s Entrepreneurs for the Future programme, which assigns an Entrepreneur in Residence to work with each start-up for a six to nine month duration. Additional benefits include free office space, meeting rooms, wifi, telecoms, access to finance, visiting expert sessions and a wide range of networking events and peer group sessions. 115 tech start-ups have been incubated by the Entrepreneurs for the Future programme since November 2009, with over £7.8 million raised in initial investment rounds.