Meet Our Members
Like all Angel Investor Clubs, the value of membership lies in the people who are actively involved in it, so you may like to meet some of our members and understand their views on the benefits that SAIC offers them:
Mandy Hutchison
My background is corporate finance/property. (S)EIS investments mitigate CGT: rewarding when they go well, disappointing when they fail. Always educational..
Prospects presented by Southern Angels Investors Club are varied and of good quality. Of most value is the opportunity to confer with and learn from other club members, whose aims and interests are aligned.
Simon Hulme
Simon Hulme is a Professor (Education) at UCL School of Management and Programme Director of the MSc Entrepreneurship degree. He lectures in Entrepreneurial Finance. As a Business Angel investor he has taken part in around 80 investments round.
Simon is a serial entrepreneur having built up and sold two significant businesses in the past. At the age of 24 he started his first business, Frame Express, a chain of sixteen fast picture framing shops in London. The business was sold to The Oliver Group Plc in 1989.
In 1992 he launched a greeting card publisher, Card Connection, with equity funding from venture capitalist 3i plc. By 2006 the business was supplying 17,000 stores in the United Kingdom and Ireland and was selling 16 million cards a year. In 2008 it was sold to UK Greetings, the British subsidiary American Greetings Inc
Jim Monks
Jim Monks was an EBAN European Business Angel of the Year Finalist 2010. He is a Non-Exec Director and Angel Investor in Tech Start-Ups and an Entrepreneur. Previously he spent almost 24 years stint at TSI/Mercator, from MBO and International sales startup, thru NASDAQ IPO, to final sale of company in December 2003.
Nigel White
Having spent 30 years or so in IBM, my experience was further enhanced by 8 years spent working in smaller software and services companies in a variety of director roles.
My two years involvement with the SAIC shows that it offers access to a good variety of screened and credible opportunities. The pooling of knowledge from other highly experienced (and friendly!) members enhances the ability to assess investment potential and the group has become an essential part of my investment plans.
Colin Lloyd
I was a member of the Kent Investor Network for a number of years which is now part of SAIC. My experience with SAIC has been excellent and through them I have seen some outstanding business opportunities and have invested in a number of companies. The organisation is very well organised with both live and Zoom meetings to view prospective companies.
Michael Penny
I’ve been an angel investor for 0ver 15 years and helped start the Surrey Investors Club which has now become the SAIC. I’ve made over 20 investments and most of my investments have been made in companies that have presented to SIC / SAIC.
Hugh Smith
I first started Angel investing in 1999, when one of the companies I was involved with created a large CGT bill. I realised that, combined with income tax relief, much of the risk in smaller company investment could be reduced. My first investment was in OLED technology as a spin out from Oxford University. Whilst it failed financially, technically it has become very successful.
David Pritchard
I joined SAIC way back in 2012 in its previous guises of SIC and Angels5K having spent my professional career in the software industry with both start-ups and more established US based companies. Being new to Angel investing and now sitting on the other side of the table, I wanted and needed to find an environment where I could learn the Angel investing ropes from investors that were serious about investing and the process of investing whilst also being able and willing to share their experiences and help coach a newbie to navigate these new strange water.
If you have specific questions about the Club and would like to discuss, then members of the leadership team will be happy to help