Passionate about supporting founders who are tackling this century’s biggest challenges, Ferdi spends time across a wide range of sectors and themes, including climate, healthcare, fintech and enterprise infrastructure.
Companies he’s led investments in or supported include: At-Bay, Capitola, ERS, Open, Oxford Nanopore, Shellworks, Supercritical, Sword Health, Sylvera and Vira.
We’re excited to be witnessing the emergence of a new generation of founders, who want to use technology to answer the most important questions facing us. How can we produce and supply enough safe and nutritious food to 9bn people? How can we keep global warming under 1.5C? How can we meaningfully extend human healthspan and lifespan?
Ferdi’s career began in consulting at Accenture’s Capital Markets group, where he worked with several financial services institutions in the City of London. He then joined Entrepreneur First, as the company builder scaled to six offices worldwide. Based in EF’s London and Berlin hubs, Ferdi developed a deep sense of empathy by working closely with scores of founders taking their very first steps in the venture journey.
Working with hundreds of idea-stage founders, looking for a co-founder, going from 0 to 1, in different sectors and ecosystems, helped me not only begin to set a bar for what good entrepreneurship looks like, but also to understand that success stories are non-obvious and non-linear.
Outside of his investment work, Ferdi led Phoenix Court Works’ Launchpad programme, a pre-seed initiative in partnership with Black Girl Fest, Salesforce Ventures and Goldman Sachs, which supported a new generation of black women founders to succeed in entrepreneurship.