Managing Director, Cooper Parry Digital | Head of Early Stage, Tech & High Growth |

I lead the CP Digital business, supporting clients with their Digital needs. Responsibilities include all M&A and growth, alongside our Private Equity partners. 

I also lead market activity for CP in the Venture Capital ecosystem (funds & founders).

Our specialist team works with Founders, CFOs and Boards of early stage, scale-up and high growth businesses, navigating challenges spanning accounting, finance, tax, audit, technology, and deal support. 

We are highly active in the scale-up ecosystem and have worked as the accounting partner for leading organisations and communities whilst also building our own community platforms, TechCFO and VentureCEO.

Having started my career at PwC, I went to on to establish and build a successful early stage focussed firm, Acclivity Advisors (which was acquired by Cooper Parry in Jan’23).

Along the way, I wrote the best selling book 'The Finance Playbook for Entrepreneurs', so that entrepreneurs of ALL backgrounds could benefit from the very best teachings.  

My unique experiences and skills have afforded me a number of Board positions across industries within public & private sectors. 

At present, these include:

1. Middlesex County Cricket Club (Board Observer, Chair of Growth Committee)
2. Queen Elizabeth's Global Schools (Chair, International Schools)
3. Labrys (Advisor to the Board)
4. HM Revenue & Customs - ABAB (Board Member)

As well as the above, 

I advise Government on how to innovate for SMEs & entrepreneurs through consultative committees and forums.

All of these roles have shown me the value of sharing what I know beyond my own sector;

And so, I enjoy speaking at universities, schools, accelerators and incubators on a wide variety of relevant entrepreneurship related topics.

Asif Ahmed

General Partner @āltitude. Closing the European SME Tech gap. Please email me. I do not check LinkedIn messages frequently.

What do I think makes a great Venture Capitalist? Judgement, Ambition and Daring. The ability and willingness to be different.

What do I think makes a great Venture Capital team? Diversity, Respect and Transparency. The alignment on both vision and values.

A serial entrepreneur seeking innovation in the venture capital industry with a strong track record of building innovative European venture capital models and investing in strong B2B technology teams and new markets. I have previously helped build two venture firms as an early employee and a hired MD.

Videesha Boeckle

Berlin 

Here in Berlin for a few days for a planned board meeting and catching up with people generally around the square mile of Rosenthaler Platz. The incredible weather has definitely created a huge sense of nostalgia.  

Already have a pretty packed calendar, but in case anyone wants to meet, DM me :)

cc: Florian, Dr. Gesa, Bettine, Lucas, Mickaël, Fabian, Tim, Anna, Jana, Christian, Shikha, Jag, Johnathan, Mayra, Philipp, Isabelle, Felix, Lukas, Matteo, Jens, Romina

General Partner, Co-founder @āltitude l SME Tech Investor | First Institutional Cheque l Vertical Solutions | Embedded Fintech

𝗔𝗿𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲’𝘀 𝟮𝟲 𝗺𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗦𝗠𝗘𝘀 🚀 ?

At āltitude we’re on a mission to close the 𝗦𝗠𝗘 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵 𝗴𝗮𝗽 𝗮𝗰𝗿𝗼𝘀𝘀 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲. We are an early-stage VC writing first cheques of
#EUR300K, backing exceptional founders who are digitising and automating core SME operations. 

We invest in 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝗻 𝗘𝗨𝗥𝗢𝗣𝗘, and we’d love to meet you, if you’re building deep into SME first software: payments, vertical software, embedded finance, AI, workflow tools, operations, marketplaces etc. 

Whatever your passion - 𝘄𝗲 𝗹𝗼𝘃𝗲 𝗦𝗠𝗘 𝗧𝗲𝗰𝗵! 

If you are an experienced operator and want to chat about the learnings in the segment with us as you develop your idea reach out. 

𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂’𝗿𝗲 𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗼 𝗮 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗺𝗶𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗶𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗲𝗻𝗮𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗦𝗠𝗘𝘀 to generate more revenue/save costs, be efficient, be sustainable, and be future-proof then happy to talk. 

Reach out via DM.

cc: Stephen, Agata, Amy, Elnura, Julian, June, Richard, Zarina

#founders #europe #B2B #SME #verticalai #verticalsolutions #embeddedfintech #payments #government #healthcare #aviation #hospitality #automotive #construction #finance #logistics #industrials #retail #realestate #legal #energy #foodandbeverage #insurance #agriculture #manufacturing

𝗔𝗿𝘁 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗳

Italy's SME economy is one of the strongest in the world. Last week, our entire GP team was briefly in Milan. Meeting two portfolio companies and several family offices and investors.

One of the investors asked us to meet mid-morning at Ginrosa, a bar that has sat in the heart of Milan's Piazza San Babila for over a century. I'd never heard of it, but thankfully, they serve things besides the aperitif of the same name. 

Milan's aperitif heritage was not that well-known to me. In 1860, Campari invented his now-famous drink in Novara. By 1867, he had opened Caffè Campari in the centre of Milan, overlooking the Duomo. Women were not permitted to enter the bar unaccompanied by a man. 

So in 1885, a female philanthropist and entrepreneur named Annunciata Bournè took over a wine shop on the same square and reversed the rules entirely. Men could not enter without being accompanied by a woman. 

Rather than compete head-on with Campari's fiery red, she created a softer, pink-tinted aperitif named Ginrosa made entirely from natural ingredients. Her family owned a distillery, and she could bottle and commercialise it from the start. 

Aperol, meanwhile, was invented in 1919 in Padova by the Barbieri brothers, whose family also owned a distillery and was barely known outside the Veneto region until 2003, when Campari bought the family-run business. The Aperol Spritz? Originally, inspired by Austrian soldiers adding sparkling water to their wine.

Two drinks companies. Similar ingredients. Completely different trajectories.

What separates them? It wasn't the recipe, luck, or product alone. It was nailing distribution, branding, ambition, and having the capital to scale. 

Ginrosa sits a few hundred yards from Caffè Campari to this day, formally recognised by Milan's municipality as a Historic Workshop. But it remained one bar on one square in one city.  Until 2023, when the current owners signed a licensing deal to relaunch it globally. The story may not be over.

This is exactly what we see now at pre-seed. The divergence in outcomes doesn't always come down to who built the better product first. 

It comes down to who told the better story, who executed better, reached the right markets faster, and who had the funding and conviction to succeed and scale.

Craft without strong distribution is a capped outcome. Distribution without a sticky and distinct product is a short-lived success. The balance of both creates sustainable venture-scale results. 

#italy #sme #familyoffice #history #venturecapital #founding #preseed #building #tech

𝗩𝗲𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗘𝗺𝗯𝗲𝗱𝗱𝗲𝗱 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝘄𝗮𝗿𝗲 - 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗹𝗶𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 

SMEs spend hours physically reconciling invoices or financial data between customers and third parties, or they pay significant money to outsource it to someone who can. 

The process is often expensive, time-consuming, frustrating, and error-prone. Generic financial software solutions often don't understand domain-specific treatment of this data. Humans often make mistakes with that volume of data. 

This morning, I spoke to an investor who was talking about this problem in the healthcare segment, specifically for insurers, and another SME owner who mentioned this issue for tens of hotels and travel companies they own.

Reconciliation costs millions every year across several industries.  

If you're a founder starting out and building a vertical software solution for domain-specific reconciliation that saves SMEs or enterprises time and money, and can be embedded into third-party software DM me. 

cc: Matteo, Tony, Mark, Mourad, Miriam, Chris

#verticaltech #embeddedsoftware #fintech #ai #reconciliation #efficiency #europe #founder #preseed

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Videesha Boeckle

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Videesha Boeckle's LinkedIn Performance

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