Meet the speakers ...

David Ripert, Venture Partner, FOV Ventures

David is Venture Partner at FOV Ventures, investing early-stage in the next era of compute, including spatial computing, AI and robotics, across Europe. FOV Ventures is based in Helsinki, London and Paris. David founded Poplar.Studio, a platform that provides award-winning 3D and Immersive experiences for consumer and enterprise. Before that, he was Head of YouTube Studios at Google throughout Europe, Middle-East & Africa for 6 years, after years between Paris and New York as VP Content for European video platform Dailymotion and in Los Angeles developing original content for Netflix. He is a board member of multiple startups and charities and he is an Executive Judge at the Webby Awards, celebrating excellence on the Internet.

Siobhan McDonnell - Co-Founder, Magnetic

Siobhan is a multi award-winning, Emmy-nominated producer and founder specialising in narrative-driven games, immersive storyworlds, and flatscreen media.​

She is the co-founder of Magnetic, a creative lab pioneering the use of AI and neuroscience to develop next-generation tools for creating emotionally intelligent, adaptive experiences across games and film. Magnetic has received R&D investment and was selected as one of 20 SMEs for the CoSTAR 2025 incubator.​​

Siobhan has worked extensively across feature film, games, XR, and emerging technologies, and also founded Heterodocs, a social impact studio known for doing story in unorthodox ways across film and XR.

Katie Martin - CEO, Audience Insights

Katie Martin is CEO of Audience Insights, a next-gen biometrics analytics company backed byleading R&D from the Universities of Bristol and Bath, UK. Audience Insights delivers moment-by-moment audience data using neuroscience, AI, and physiological signals—helping creatorsoptimise content, engagement, and performance. Katie and her team are building scalable toolsthat connect creativity, data, and strategy to shape the future of audience intelligence.​

Wesa Aapro - Head of Metaverse YLE

Wesa Aapro is Metaverse Lead for Yle Digital Services, looking at the possibilities of new technology and trying not to get too hyped up about the impossibilities. He is knee-deep in The Metaverse, which is already here if we include game worlds in the definition. He is excited about Roblox and especially in the vastly creative yet genderless avatars, the souls of our quickly growing up Generation Alpha.

Spike Laurie, Partner, Hiro Capital

Spike is a partner at Hiro Capital, a games, games-tech and technology focused venture capital fund investing in the innovators of the future, where he leads the fund’s game studio, games technology and esports investments.​

​Prior to joining Hiro Capital, Spike was Global Vice President of Publisher Relations, Managing Director UK and Managing Director Brazil at ESL, the world’s largest esports company. 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.

Henric Suuronen, GP, Play Ventures

Henric Suuronen is founding GP at Play Ventures and previously co-founded Nonstop Games (acquired by King). He was an early investor in Huuuge Games (IPO), Omniata (acquired by King), DataTiger (acquired by Apple), Astralis Group (IPO on Nasdaq), and more.​

He has over 16 years of experience building mobile games and studios. He was previously Product Management Director at Digital Chocolate (Helsinki and Barcelona), Head of Studio at Wooga (Berlin), and Senior Creative Director at King.​

He is rated by founders and TechCrunch as one of the "Most Engaged" VCs.

Peter Ratcliffe - Founder & CEO, Somata Labs​

Peter Ratcliffe is the Founder & CEO of Somata Labs, a London-based deep-tech company developing deterministic AI that makes the human body machine-readable. Somata is the architect of Somata-LM, a proprietary latent model of human shape, commercialised initially through Somata-GM for gaming and real-time environments - enabling instant generation of real-scale, production-ready 3D bodies from a single input. Peter is focused on scaling this technology into the foundational layer for realtime, embodied digital systems.​

Susan Cummings – Co-Founder, 10six Games​

Susan Cummings is a 30 year veteran of the game industry and her history includes the co-founding of 2K Games (signing critically acclaimed franchises Bioshock, Borderlands, Civilization, X-Com). She and her partner Lee recently launched a new indie game studio, 10six Games, creators of the upcoming "YOU vs ZOMBIES", one of the first natively LLM enabled games, powered by their Infinity Platform. 

She is also an advisor and angel investor, and is a Visiting Professor at University of South Wales.

Emily Bailey – Co-Founder, JECO ​

​Em started out her career in games by co-founding an indie studio, she spun out of a university project into a successful crowdfunded title. She went on to lead BD & Ops at CULT Games, and participated in two equity fundraising rounds.​

Beyond games, Emily advocates for UK game development, she’s on the Board of Code Coven CIC which supports underrepresented talent in the industry. In 2024, she co-founded JECO, creating developer tools to automate software efficiency - cutting dev cycles, improving performance, and slashing compute costs across every product that runs on code.  In 2025, she was appointed as Board member for the UK Video Games Council.​

By 29, Emily has raised £2M+ through private equity, grants, and crowdfunding. A BAFTA Member and 2024 Multiplayer Juror, in 2024 named in Forbes 30 Under 30 and this year named We Are The City Rising Star Entrepreneur of the year. 

Matthew Wiggins​

​Matthew Wiggins is the CEO of Mojiworks. The studio’s games have reached over 140million players worldwide and is an early partner with Reddit on its new app platform, soon to launch rTown, a massively social city simulation powered by generative AI.​

​A hands-on leader with a background in design, development, and technology leadership, he has served as both CEO and CTO, combining creative vision with deep technical expertise. Matthew previously co-founded Wonderland, which was acquired by Zynga, and has since held multiple board and leadership roles across the games and tech sectors. At Mojiworks, he has raised investment from top-tier investors and built partnerships with some of the world’s biggest tech companies to advance the future of social play.​

​His work focuses on the intersection of social and technology, with deep experience in simulation and AI, and he leads Mojiworks’ commitment to progressive culture and workplace excellence, recognised among the Best Places to Work in Games with eight awards to date.

Rodrigo Malachias - Founder, MedibleGo ​

​Rodrigo Malachias is the founder of MedibleGo, an AI-powered platform helping banks and fintechs de-risk SME lending and build smarter ways to fund entrepreneurial growth. Backed by Innovate UK, MedibleGo enables financial institutions to enhance SME offerings, generate qualified lending leads, and strengthen portfolios through smarter insights and automation. The company has been recognized as a Top Social Impact Startup in London (F6S), a Top LatAm Startup (Wayra), and selected for the UK Government’s Global Entrepreneur Programme (GEP). Rodrigo has collaborated with Visa, Mastercard, and Barclays on innovation and SME growth initiatives. When he’s not working with banks and SMEs, he’s teaching innovation to postgraduates, writing a book, or training for his first marathon — because building startups wasn’t challenging enough.​

Karim Palant - Director, External Affairs, BVCA​

Karim Palant is Director of External Affairs at the BVCA, where he leads the Public Affairs, Communications and Research functions.​
Karim and his colleagues tell the story of private capital through high-impact engagement with policymakers, stakeholders and the media.​

Karim also oversees the BVCA’s agenda-setting research programme, which includes the Performance Measurement Survey - the largest primary research survey of its kind in the UK, and the annual Report on Investment Activity.​

He has two decades of experience in tech and economic policy. From 2015, he led public policy and economic impact work at major tech firms -  at LinkedIn and previously Facebook. Earlier in his career, he served as Head of Policy to the Shadow Chancellor.​

Karim studied PPE at the University of Oxford, following his education at Calderstones Comprehensive School in Liverpool.​

Jessica Rasmussen - CEO, Two Magnolias​

​Jessica co-founded Two Magnolias in 2019 and serves as its Chief Executive Officer.​

Prior to building Two Magnolias, Jessica spent 30 years working in Investment Banking as a Global Markets expert, advising the world’s largest macro fund managers across fixed Income products. She spent her last 10 years at Bank of America, London as a Managing Director, and part of the EMEA leadership team holding significant revenue responsibility.​

Jessica is an Advisor and NED to companies that span the universe of climate change disruption to social impact. She currently sits as a NED of Balance Eco Ltd and Sing King Ltd.​

Jessica holds a BSc in Management Science from Warwick University and is certified in Climate Change and Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.

Mads Jensen - Managing Partner, SuperSeed​

​Mads is a successful entrepreneur and passionate technologist (having authored multiple US patents) who has worked for 2 decades building and growing tech businesses. At SuperSeed he helps ambitious technical founders build great companies from the early stages. Prior to SuperSeed, Mads was an entrepreneur, taking Sefaira (a SaaS company) from inception in 2009 to exit in 2016. Before that he was a business executive at IBM.

Jonathan Silibia - Partner, Bullhound Capital​

​Jonathan joined Bullhound Capital from Molten Ventures (formerly DFJ/Draper Esprit), where he was a Partner focused on direct investments and successful exits, including RavenPack, Ledger, M-Files, and PodPoint. At Molten, he also led the Fund of Funds and Secondary practices, investing in over 80 early-stage VC funds and managing multiple secondary portfolio transactions. These initiatives provided exposure to standout companies such as UiPath, Revolut, TransferWise, Peak Games, and Typeform.​

Jonathan’s career began in investment banking, advising on equity offerings and mergers & acquisitions at leading firms including Apax Partners Corporate Finance, Rothschild & Cie, and Jefferies.​

Jonathan holds a Master degree in Management from EM-Lyon and the University of St. Gallen, and a postgraduate degree in advanced corporate finance from the University of Paris IX Dauphine​.