Julie Meyer

Founder and CEO of Ariadne Capital, Founder - Entrepreneur Country, Managing Partner - Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs Fund [ACE] Julie Meyer believes that Individual Capitalism aligns and releases people's ingenuity for the solving of the world's problems at the macro and micro levels as well as accelerating the future. Julie founded Ariadne Capital in August 2000 to create a new model for the financing of entrepreneurship in Europe and the UK - "Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs". She created the founding Investor Partnership of 59 leading entrepreneurs and business builders who are Ariadne's core shareholders. She has led or co-led the investments and/or advisory mandates with BeatThatQuote, Espotting, Monitise, SpinVox, and Zopa. Julie was part of the early team at Tom Teichman's NewMedia Investors in 1998, which became early stage investment firm Spark Ventures in October 1999. At NewMedia Investors, she co-managed deals in key technology companies including ArcCores, lastminute.com and WGSN. Also, in 1998, she founded First Tuesday, the network of entrepreneurs, which many credit for igniting the Internet generation in Europe. It was sold in July 2000 for $50 million in cash and shares. She has been named one of INSEAD's Top 50 Alumni, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, World Economic Forum Global Leader of Tomorrow, TIME Magazine Digital 50, one of WIRED's 100, one of London's 1000 Most Influential People (Evening Standard) and one of the Top 30 Most Influential Women in Europe. Julie is also one of the BBC's Online Dragons in the award-winning Dragon's Den Online, and is also currently setting up a "Dads and Daughters" foundation to support and extend her thesis that women's identities are shaped - for good or bad - by the messages they receive from their father's as children and young adults. She is on the Board of Directors of Jellybook, Medikidz, and Vestergaard Frandsen, a for profit humanitarian development firm. She graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities and English Literature from Valparaiso University, near Chicago, US in 1988, having spent her junior year in Cambridge, UK in 1986. In 2011, she was asked to be on the Secretary of State's Entrepreneurs Panel and the Secretary of Health's Innovation Panel.