Simon Cook

Simon is the CEO of Draper Esprit and has been involved with the European Venture Capital industry since 1995. In 2006 he led the spinout of Cazenove Private Equity and acquisition of Prelude Ventures, in 2007 he completed the next stage of Esprit’s expansion plan, negotiating the partnership with DFJ to form DFJ Esprit and in 2009 helped lead the acquisition of 3i plc’s European VC business. In recent times Simon has continued to build the DFJ Esprit business, leading the fund raising and investment strategy for the DFJ Esprit III primary VC fund and through the further development of the VC secondaries business through the joint venture with Tempo Capital Partners. He has been involved with a number of Europe’s most successful technology start-ups. His past board roles include successful companies such as Lovefilm (Amazon), Cambridge Silicon Radio (IPO LSE), Virata (IPO Nasdaq), nCipher (IPO LSE) and KVS (Symantec). Simon currently serves on the Boards of Neul Limited and Horizon Discovery Limited. Previously Simon was a partner with Elderstreet Investments and a Director at 3i in Cambridge, and worked as a strategy and IT consultant at KPMG (where he established the Internet practice) and as a computer games developer during the 1980’s. Simon is a graduate of University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST).