Rank last year: 18
Tony Askew, is one of three founders of, and now runs, Reed Elsevier Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the Anglo-Dutch publisher. He has recently become the first chairman of the corporate venturing group of UK trade body the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, which is looking to broaden its approach to take account of the impact that corporates can have on venture capital in the UK and across Europe and under Askew’s aegis has one of the country’s most successful investors to provide guidance.
Askew and his co-partner Kevin Brown moved to Reed Elsevier Ventures at the end of 2000, along with his predecessor as head, Diane Noble, who is now chief executive of UK government-backed emerging markets investor Commonwealth Development Corporation.
Askew said: “We found a welcoming home here, as Reed Elsevier wanted us to create a successful, long-term corporate venturing capability. We designed the fund as a financial VC [venture capital firm] but with a meaningful strategic angle. The financial focus means we take board seats and our compensation includes carried interest [a share of investment profit], like traditional VCs, which aligns us well with entrepreneurs and other investors. Our strategic angle comes from bringing to bear Reed Elsevier’s superior access to domain knowledge and a highly relevant referral network”. Twelve years on there have been two changes of chief executive and three chairmen.
Askew first became a venture capitalist at Softbank, a Japan-based internet company, after working as a corporate and an entrepreneur. He said: “Back in the early days of the cauldron of the internet bubble I was persuaded it would be far more interesting to apply what I had learnt in building digital businesses by becoming a VC and so I joined Softbank.”
Askew said: “I graduated as a physicist, so I did what all physicists do in the UK and joined a management consultancy.” Other past activities included running electronic publishing for Random House, which included co-investing in a Los Angeles-based new media company alongside filmmaker Stephen Spielberg. Later at mobile operator Cellnet, now O2, he co-developed and launched the world’s first wireless internet service provider, Genie, which grew quickly to 4 million users across Europe.”
Reed Elsevier Ventures was an early investor in Palantir, a technology company which secured a $2.5bn valuation and $400m in annual revenues in 2011, according to news provider TechCrunch.
Askew is on the boards of Babylon, the translation tool, First Life Research, PartMiner, Spacecurve and Tolven.
What technological investing trends are you most excited about and why?
Askew said: “A big trend we are investing behind at the moment is how digitisation and data are transforming other industries than TMT. We have made our first agtech investment in a business called AgWorld based in Australia.”
Askew added: “We have been investing in digital health for 10 years and now we are excited in that space that we are now on the cusp of a major revolution in how healthcare will be delivered over the next 20 years, much like where media and information was 15 years ago. We see other traditional industries, such as transportation and manufacturing beginning to be disrupted by innovations coming from data, sensor networks and advanced analytics (e.g. Uber and Waze). This is a major shift and will be incredibly disruptive and create a huge amount of innovation and value.“