James Gardner has extensive experience in Business Angel Funding, Business Incubation and Public Funded business support initiatives.
james.gardner@connectlondon.org

James Gardner is well known in the high growth start-up and business angel sectors through his work with early stage ventures, angel investor syndicates, universities, innovation centres and professional service firms.
He started his first business venture many years ago and has experienced the highs and lows of risking his own money in informal equity deals by personally investing in five start-ups.

James’ successful experience of technology transfer and business incubation led to his appointment in 2004 as CEO of an experimental business incubator, sponsored by an interesting mix of public and private sector players (including Goldman Sachs, and Coca Cola). James was also the first chief executive of London Knowledge Innovation Centre, a full service business incubator at South Bank University Technopark, which opened in 2006.

James is the author of:

James has been a board member of several well-known Business Angel Networks:

James extensive involvement with large corporates, university spin-outs, management buy-outs, licensing deals, start-ups and trade sales reinforces his belief that the key ingredients of business start-up success still remain: money, management, market and business model!

James is a member of The UK Research &Development Society (motto ‘from ideas to wealth’), whose role is to help make the UK the best environment for R&D in the World.

From 2003 to 2007 James was an external non-executive director of the University of Surrey, Ventures Advisory Board and Seed Fund, actively encouraging R&D through “proof of concept” towards commercial exploitation of Surrey’s inventions. James has worked on carbon nanotube PV solar cells and thin film ultra low energy lighting projects with Professor Ravi Silva (World expert in Nanotechnology) and his team at The University of Surrey’s Advanced Technology Institute (ATI).
Surrey is a founder member of the SET Squared Partnership, which runs one of the largest business incubator networks in Europe.

Christopher Fogg FCA, BSc, MBA  - Director of UKBI and BBAA christopherfogg@connectlondon.org

Christopher Fogg has been involved in supporting entrepreneurs in starting and growing their businesses for over 30 years.  He is a Chartered Accountant, Physicist and took a “Late in Life” MBA in 2000.

He opened his first formal incubator in 1998 and has now started a total of 4 business incubators.  He has tried a number of models – for Profit; Hybrid- part For Profit, Part Not for Profit; and fully funded by the LDA – London Innovation Centre.

Christopher is a director of UKBI and British Business Angels Association (BBAA).  He has prepared a preliminary research document on the sustainability of Business Incubation.

Christopher is the Visiting Entrepreneur to the seven West Focus universities in London.

JEFF DEAN has a long and successful career in business management having started up many companies and taken them from “start up to take off”. Working primarily in the electronics high technology sector, Jeff has been internationally recognised as an authority in the fields that he has worked. Recently, Jeff has focussed on working with small to medium sized enterprises assisting them by offering sensible & creative advice for the development of their businesses. Currently, Jeff is involved in starting up his own company that specialises in offering low cost, affordable services to start up companies by ensuring that the processes used to assist clients are efficient and where possible automated, hence keeping the fees charged to a minimum.