TEAM
THE HIRO TEAM HAVE CO-FOUNDED AND ANGELED OVER $9BN WORTH OF SOME EXTRAORDINARY GAMES, SPORTS AND TECHNOLOGY COMPANIES
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Luke has 30 years in Technology and 21 years in Digital Games. He has founded and invested in Games and Technology companies around the world. He was co-founder & CEO of Inspired Entertainment Inc, a Nasdaq listed mobile games and virtual sports technology leader with operations worldwide. Luke was a founding board member of The Cloud, the UK’s largest public access Wi-Fi operator and is a founding board member of Upskins, a video games content innovator. Luke was a Case Leader at the Boston Consulting Group, earned a First Class Honours in Philosophy at the University of Cambridge and was a Fulbright Scholar to the University of California, Berkeley. He is passionate about content and storytelling and their interaction with the future of technology. Luke grew up in a family of poets, writers and gamers and is an old-school rock climber.
Luke leads Hiro’s investment strategy and compliance and focuses on Hiro’s digital sports, social network and game technology investments. -
Ian Livingstone is a pioneer and legend of the global video game industry and was made a Commander of the British Empire (CBE) for his services to the UK video games industry. He co-founded two billion-dollar games companies, Games Workshop (Warhammer) and Eidos (Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) for whom, as Executive Chairman, he led the successful London IPO. He was angel investor and chairman of Playdemic, creator of the global top 10 mobile game Golf Clash. As well as his role in Hiro, Ian is Non-Executive Chairman of Sumo Group PLC, a leading London-listed cross-platform games developer. Ian co-created the multi-million-selling Fighting Fantasy series of role playing game books. Ian has been an angel Investor and advisor to multiple leading games studios, including Mediatonic, Bossa Studios, Fusebox and many more. Ian is also co-founder of the Livingstone Academy, a next generation UK Academy School focused on a 21st century digital creative curriculum. Ian is proud of his geek heritage and admits to having over 1,000 board games in his home study and a life size statue of Lara Croft.
Ian focuses on Hiro’s games and studio investments. -
Rated ‘Britain’s Coolest Female Founder’ by Business Insider, Cherry is the co-founder of global community and e-commerce brand LoveCrafts and has spent 10 years working with venture backed tech companies including Mimecast and New Voice Media, among others. Cherry spent 7 years at Computacenter Plc leading strategy and M&A, and building a new software division which grew to £250m turnover in 3 years. She was previously at The Boston Consulting Group and has a first class degree in history from Cambridge University. Cherry is a contributor to Tech Nation’s ‘Upscale: what it takes to scale a start up, by the people who’ve done it’. Cherry has 3 kids, one dog, one husband and makes a great martini.
Cherry leads Hiro’s deal pipeline and focuses on games media, platform and software investments. -
Spike is a games industry veteran with experience building esports production and business infrastructure across three continents and driving large, multi million dollar Esports revenue pipelines. During his four years at ESL, the world’s largest Esports company, he held positions as Global Vice President of Publisher Relations, Managing Director UK and Managing Director Brazil. Prior to ESL he worked for Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment overseeing their global Esports strategy and looking after the retention and engagement of all games for the EMEA market. Spike was formerly co-Chair of the UK Interactive Entertainment’s Esports sub group. Spike regularly plays competitive games online and has been playing Counter Strike since 2000.
Spike leads many of Hiro’s games and esports investments. -
Simon has 30 years experience in TMT and Media, as well as 12 years as a technology VC Partner. Simon is currently Founder & CEO at The Ink Factory, a leading digital film production company founded in 2010 in London and Los Angeles. The Ink Factory is best known for global television hit ‘The Night Manager’ and for 2019 feature film ‘Fighting With My Family’, starring Florence Pugh and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. The Ink Factory also co-founded LA-based games studio Giant Squid with one of the industry’s top talents, Matt Nava. Giant Squid is the creator of Abzu and the forthcoming The Pathless, which debuts at the core of Apple Arcade, as well as on the Epic store and PS4. Simon came to The Ink Factory from top European VC firm Amadeus Capital Partners, where he was a Senior Partner and sat on the Investment Committee. Simon oversaw a number of investments in technology, communications and media, and exits included two IPOs and successful sales to Samsung and Marvell. Prior to that he was the founder and CEO of Two Way TV, a pioneering company in the field of interactive TV. Simon’s very first outing in the media world was as captain of his college’s University Challenge team. They lost ignominiously in the first round, cutting short a stellar TV career.
Simon sits on Hiro’s Investment Committee and brings investment wisdom from an non-executive point of view. -
Andy has spent over 20 years in the Games & Technology industry working in various senior finance roles including Commercial Appraisal, M&A, Financial Planning, Strategic Planning and Acquisition Integration. Andy has led multiple equity and debt financing projects and played a lead role in IPO’s on both London’s AIM market and New York’s Nasdaq. Andy has an abundance of commercial, financial planning and reporting experience and has led Post Merger Integration synergy projects and venture-backed spin outs and M&A. Andy is a CIMA chartered accountant, married with 2 children and spends his weekends at football, either watching his son play or Nottingham Forest.
Andy focuses on the fund’s financial planning and portfolio balance, leads financial due diligence on potential investments and supports portfolio companies with strategy and financial planning. -
Luca spent 5 years as Market Analyst and 3 years as Business Analyst and possesses experience in inferential analysis of Games market trends, big data, risk analysis and assessment of market entry opportunities. Luca has managed the business insight for the Virtual Sports department at Inspired Entertainment Inc and helped operators improve their efficiency and profit. Luca was also a contributor to the initial market entry strategy in North America. Luca has a BEng in Industrial Engineering and a MA Management, where he was in the class top 2%. Luca once held the 1st place on the global leaderboard of popular mobile game Basketball Showdown (out of millions of players). Luca is an avid mobile gamer.
Luca focuses on the financial and business analysis of Hiro’s investment strategy. -
Joe has over 5 years of experience working in the video game industry in a variety of functions including venture capital, corporate strategy, business development, M&A, and performance marketing. Most recently, Joe was a Director on the Corporate Development & Strategy at Activision Blizzard, leading M&A and internal strategy for one of the world’s largest video game publishers. Prior to that, Joe helped lead TikTok’s gaming monetization efforts, guiding F2P publishers on how to scale through the world’s most downloaded app. Joe was also an early-stage investor in gaming, VR/AR, and eSports for Greycroft.
Joe graduated Summa Cum Laude with a B.A. in economics from Northwestern University and received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. -
Alistair has been in internet, games and mobile technology delivery for over twenty years. He designed core ecommerce and content architectures for a number of startups during internet 1.0. As CTO at Inspired Games, he had responsibility for the games technology throughout its entire lifecycle and oversaw early moves into virtualisation, cloud, mobile and China. He is now using that experience to help growing companies remain agile so they can realise their potential through architecture design, due diligence, coaching, IP, patents and technology vision. Alistair is a Natural Sciences graduate of Cambridge University. An expert climber, mountain biker and mountaineer, Alistair has shaken hands with the President of Yemen while wearing an egg-stained shirt and shorts.
Alistair focuses on evaluating the technology potential of Hiro’s investments and on working with Hiro’s portfolio companies on tech scaling, patents and team growth. -
Samuel has spent 6 years as an Analyst working across M&A and Tech Production Functions. Working with multiple business units, Samuel was on the team assisting in the Nasdaq listing of Inspired Entertainment, Inc. Samuel also assisted in product development, devising product strategies for entering new games markets and developing new products. As an avid pc and console gamer and ex-hacker with deep technical experience ranging from Cloud Computing to Game Engines, he has always been drawn to the technology that underpins and enables games. Samuel currently has more hours logged across Steam, Battle.net, UPlay and Origin than he would like publicly known.
Samuel focuses on the product and gameplay analysis of Hiro's investment strategy. -
Nicholas Lovell helps people make successful, profitable video games. Following a career financing media and technology companies in the City of London, Nicholas switched to game design in 2008 when he launched gamesbrief.com, a website dedicated to the business of games. His focus is on Free-to-Play and Games as a Service, which he explored in his books The Curve, aimed at a general audience, and The Pyramid of Game Design, aimed at game developers.
He is currently Game Director at Electric Square, working on an unannounced mobile game, following roles on Hot Wheels id and Forza Street. Other companies he has advised include Firefly Studios (Stronghold Kingdoms), CCP (Eve Online), Bohemia Interactive (Vigor) and many others.
Nicholas graduated from Oxford University with a degree in Modern History (although the latest period he studied ended in 1100), loves sailing and has dabbled in writing pirate-themed roleplaying supplements for Steve Jackson Games. -
Beth has 25 years’ experience in the financial industry in both China and the UK. She has her own business – BML Consulting – helping businesses and PE/VC funds with cross-border fundraising, investment and business development activities between China / Asia and the UK / West. Prior to that, Beth was a Global Strategist doing global multi-asset allocation at JP Morgan Asset Management in London. She has an MBA from Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.
Being a native Chinese from Tianjin, China, and having spent 21 years in the UK and the US, Beth has a global perspective on everything she works on. She is fascinated by people and has a deep understanding of nuances and profound differences in how differently people from oriental and Western cultures perceive, understand, communicate, and make decisions. She loves to help people understand each other better, build trust and deliver positive results for their businesses.
Beth has been told by many of her friends and business contacts that she is a great listener, always calm and positive, and good at asking tough questions in a diplomatic way. She loves playing golf because everything she learns in golf she can apply in life and business.
Beth focuses on helping Hiro Capital and their portfolio companies with initiatives in China and Asia. -
May joined Hiro Capital following a successful career of over 12 years in Wealth Management, first with Société Générale Private Bank and then with the National Bank of Abu Dhabi in Geneva. Prior to this May worked in Investment Banking for Bear Stearns in London. She has extensive experience servicing High Net Worth client relationships. She is currently focusing on trying to beat her 5 year old son at Mario Kart.
As Investor Relations Director, May is building strong and personal relationships with our Limited Partners and keeping them regularly informed of the Fund's updates and progress. -
For the past 20 years, Jon has been analysing, writing and giving presentations about shifts in the technology and business dynamics of the games industry - everything from the rise of middleware to the disruption of digital distribution and F2P mobile gaming. He has degrees in engineering and history from Imperial College, London, and was a co-founder at Steel Media, the company behind the Pocket Gamer websites and conferences. Since 2018, he's been focused on the impact of blockchain and player-owned economies on the gaming sector, providing deep analysis via his GamesTX Substack newsletter, and Blockchain Gaming World YouTube channel and podcast.
Jon is Hiro's blockchain gaming venture specialist, both advising existing portfolio companies and analysing future investments. -
Thomas is a serial entrepreneur with 28 years of experience in sports licensing, sports data, sports betting, mobile games and Esports. Thomas built the international football division at UFA Sports (later Sportfive/Lagadère Sports) for the acquisition and distribution of worldwide broadcasting and marketing rights that became the leader in Europe. Thomas established and guided various companies in the sports and gaming industries, including Global Sportnet (Founder and CEO for 13 years, sold to Apax Partners and WPP Group), Iconicfuture (Co-Founder and Chairman) and is currently Founder and CEO of Gecco Enterprises, a holding company that acquires, alignes and integrates complementary companies in sports and digital gaming. Thomas successfully completed more than 20 capital raises and transactions. Thomas enjoys serious Spanish wines and German supercars.
Thomas focuses Hiro’s investments in digital Sports and Esports and Games especially in the DACH region.