The Management Team

David Long, co-founder and CEO
David has over 20 years experience as a serial entrepreneur in technology and distribution businesses. As a founder of Orion Media Marketing Plc early in his career, he gained a wealth of knowledge in developing, managing and exiting successful businesses. His past career also includes roles as Head of Europe for beenz.com, an online currency and marketing company and Head of Business Development for Hyperlink, a large web development agency. He holds an honours degree in Business Studies.

Matteo Berlucchi, co-founder and CEO of Livestation
Matteo has been leading Skinkers since it was founded in 2001. He recently handed over the running of the company to his partner and co-founder David Long in order to focus on Livestation.  Matteo is one of the leading entrepreneurs and innovators in Internet services in the UK with over 14 years of experience in the sector. His experience spans large online consumer services, online marketing and Internet technologies. Berlucchi has a doctoral degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Padua (Italy) and spent three years researching in the field of Virtual Reality at Imperial College London (UK).

Rob Noble, COO
Prior to joining Skinkers Rob was most recently CEO and founder of Assured Medical Limited, the first successful provider of full private medical practice management services, which was successfully sold. Before this he was the CEO of the start-up Q-go UK Ltd and prior to this European Managing Director of Beenz.com. Rob also built and successfully sold a number of Internet services businesses following his time as an executive with IBM/Lotus and Digital. Rob is also a non-executive director of Jack Media, adviser to a number of web-based companies and charities as well as a part-time Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management on eBusiness practices.

Chris Dawson, Head of Professional Services
After many years at an executive level within Unisys, Sequent and IBM, Chris moved to join the leadership team of UK software company, Searchspace.  After two years the company was successfully sold to a US venture capitalist. He completed a further year of excellent growth and profitability running the Global Professional Services group. Chris has experience in all aspects of the computer services business – systems integration, project management, outsourcing, software development, consultancy, customer education and software support.

Mark Stimson, Head of Strategy & Innovation
With engineering as a passion, but its practical application as his mantra, Mark has moved from the field of avionics at GEC (now BAe) as a senior systems engineer, through Multimedia at Asymetrix as Technical Director Europe to SumTotal  Systems as their General Manager and Head of Professional Services outside of the US before joining Skinkers as Head of Strategy and Innovation.  Mark has led a number of worldwide rollouts of Enterprise systems and as Head of Innovation, holds the practical exploitation of technology to make a real difference in the enterprise as his key goal.

The Board

Philip Rowley
Philip was Chairman and CEO of AOL Europe, the interactive services, web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce provider until February 2007. Currently he is a non-executive director of ARM Holdings plc and HMV Group plc. Philip is a qualified chartered accountant and was Group Finance Director of Kingfisher plc from 1998 to 2001. Prior to that his roles included Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of EMI Music Worldwide. He was also the co-founder and Managing Director of Tribeca Technologies, a New York-based technology company specialising in ISDN connectivity and sound compression technologies.

Hitesh Mehta
Hitesh has extensive experience as a venture capital investor in high technology companies as well as significant operational experience. Prior to co-founding Acacia Capita, Hitesh was a General Partner of Amadeus Capital Partners Limited. He was involved in some of Amadeus’ most successful investments, including Entropic (acquired by Microsoft), Element 14 (acquired by Broadcom), and Whereonearth (subsequently acquired by Yahoo!). His operational experience includes being Managing Director of Fayrewood plc, an AIM listed company, where he initiated and implemented a new strategy that resulted in the company growing from £4m to £52m in revenues over a 12-month period following two highly successful acquisitions.

Jay Patel
Jay is Executive Director of SPARK Ventures and was part of its founding team in 1999. Jay is currently responsible for the investments in IMI, Skinkers, Unanimis, Complinet, MarketClusters and gamblingcompliance. Previously he was involved in Kobalt, Firebox, elata and mblox. He led the creation of a serviced office at Glasshouse Street and the sale of a substantial stake in Spuetz as well as many minor exits. He was previously a Director of NewMedia Investors and held executive positions at UBS Warburg and BSkyB.

Christopher Smart
Chris is a founder and General Partner of Acacia Capital Partners (see www.acaciacp.com) a venture capital company which invests in technology companies across Europe. He has been active in venture investing for more than 20 years. In this time he has been actively involved with numerous companies including Cambridge Display Technology, Solarflare, Shazam, Mirics, Automsoft and Cambridge Positioning Systems. 

William Lu
William is an Investment Director at SPARK Ventures. He focuses on SPARKs Business Development in Asia, identifying investment opportunities in greater China. Prior to SPARK, William had extensive experience in building hedge fund strategies for Man Investment Products and technology entrepreneurship in financial analytics software and online games as the merchandise licensee for Vivendi Universal Games.

William is qualified as a Chartered Financial Analyst with the CFA Institute, and holds degrees from the University of Science and Technology of China and London Business School respectively. He also has academic publications in internationally referred core journals such as Communications in Statistics.

David Long

Matteo Berlucchi

Rob Noble