We are proud to have built a diverse team with a collaborative and supportive culture, something we actually consider to be pretty unique in this market
One of the things that set MMC apart is the commitment we make to those that choose to engage with us — to be deeply invested in the entrepreneurs and businesses that we back, and to be deeply invested in our own people and the community that we are a part of (you can read more about the MMC approach here).
Last week we shared a look back at some of the successes we enjoyed in 2021. All of this was only possible because of the hard work and dedication of this exceptional team. And so we are genuinely delighted to announce that we have made the following promotions to reflect these successes and to strengthen the team for 2022.
Mina Samaan becomes a Partner
Since joining MMC five years, Mina has been involved in investments in over 15 companies including Current Health (recently acquired by Best Buy for $400m). He has built an impressive portfolio, leading some of our most exciting deals including SenseOn, Synthesia, Red Sift and Tru.ID – all raising successful further funding rounds in the last year. He has also continued to expand on his track-record in enterprise software, leading several of MMC’s most notable deals in the last year, including electric vehicle software provider, Eatron Technologies and enterprise automation management platform, RPA Supervisor.
His background is pretty interesting too. He joined us from Lazard in London where he advised companies on M&A transactions across sectors including industrials and technology. He has a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and previously worked as an aerodynamics engineer for Williams Formula 1 team (in the running for coolest job before joining MMC, though Henry was a treasure hunter). At Williams he worked on race-car design and development as well as control software and testing.
Mina has demonstrated time and again his ability to show up prepared and knowledgeable about a space. He has defined and redefined an honest, authentic and inspiring dialogue between himself and the entrepreneurs he supports.
Mina has become a real leader in the team – pushing us to be the best we can be and fulfill our ambitions to back the next generation of European winners. We’re proud to have him as a partner.
Alexia Arts has been promoted to Principal
Alexia joined MMC in 2018 from Santander’s venture capital arm. Whilst there, Alexia invested in fintech companies across the wealth management, retail and SME banking space, giving her deep insights into incumbents’ systems and processes, as well as how to execute game-changing fintech partnerships.
Since then Alexia has worked on countless new deals and follow-on investments, bringing enthusiasm and momentum to each process.
Alexia has deepened her focus on the value that next-generation data products will unlock in fintech, insurtech and beyond. She has expanded her track record in fintech working closely with Apexx, ChAI, Qumata, Supercede and TreasurySpring, made two digital health investments including Vira Health and works closely with Cloudsmith and MindsDB in the broader cloud infrastructure space.
Alexia also had a busy end of 2021 – so watch this space!
Lucci Levi steps up to Director & Head of Community
Lucci has been our secret weapon over the past two years. During that time she has taken on the challenge to build a platform & community function from the ground up within MMC – not knowing that she would be doing so throughout a pandemic…
Lucci has designed and delivered a platform has been used to support scores of founders and their teams across areas such as sales, recruitment, culture, partnerships, and access to the MMC peer mentoring network (you can read more about that here). But you don’t need to take our word for it – you can ask pretty much any of the founders we work with. In fact, Lucci regularly gets more shout outs in portfolio board updates than anyone else in the team!
Nishil Patel becomes Director & Head of Sales
Finally, in order to invest in and provide support to our wonderful portfolio companies, we need capital. Nishil has overseen a record fundraising year for MMC, in the process building relationships with some of the best-known wealth management firms in the UK, consolidating MMC’s reputation as the best venture capital fund available to high-net-worth individual investors.
Masamba Senghore becomes an Associate
Masamba joined us at the end of 2020 and he has already had an impressive impact. Perhaps not surprising given he was already pretty experienced in venture, despite joining us shortly after graduating from University College London, where he ran its Entrepreneurs Venture Capital Fund and was also a Student Investor at the Creator Fund. Not to mention an internship with our friends over at Episode 1. Maybe that’s also why Sifted has already named him one of Europe’s’ top 30 young venture capitalists.
Masamba is passionate about supporting the next generation of disrupters, the entrepreneurs who aim to change the way we transact, work and learn. He is particularly interested in the movement to open source financial product building and the broader Web 3.0 world on the horizon.
As well as promoting these superstars, we also added four new hires to the team to support our growth.
Andrei Dvornic – Principal
Andrei joins us from Finch Capital, where he led tech and infrastructure deals (such as GPU-driven data analytics company Brytlyt and news API business Aylien) and built data-driven sourcing tools. He’s also recently been advising a couple of startups and funds. Previously he was at Khazanah, where he worked on later-stage technology investments.
Andrei spent the first five years of his career at Arista Networks, a Silicon Valley-based cloud networking company – starting as a software engineer then moving into more customer-facing roles. He also has an MBA from London Business School.
Charlotte Barttelot – Investment Manager
Charlotte joined from Mercia’s Series A fund where she invested in digital healthcare and life science companies amongst other sectors including enterprise software.
Prior to Mercia, Charlotte spent five years at Silicon Valley Bank working with late-stage software companies. Charlotte will continue to focus on digital health, life sciences and wellness and will be sharing more on the sectors she is most excited about in the coming weeks.
Nitish Malhotra – Associate
Nitish started as a consultant at McKinsey in India before joining a video streaming start-up, Iflix (exited to Tencent after a $350m). He then joined waste management company, Saahas Zero Waste as well as creating a D2C organic beverage brand.
He cuts his teeth on VC with a 6 month internship with our friends at Nauta after his MBA at London Business School.
We’re incredibly excited for Andrei, Charlotte and Nitish to have joined the team. This series of promotions and hires recognises the impact that these individuals have had to the growth of MMC and our belief that they can help us fulfill our ambitions for the year ahead. 2021 was an outstanding year for MMC and we are committed to maintaining this momentum throughout 2022.
So we start this year as a team of 23. But we have big plans going forward and that will mean lots more hiring as we continue to build the best team to back the next generation of European winners.