About
Big Bang Ventures
Big Bang Ventures is a seed and early-stage venture capital fund for high-growth digital media and software companies. In addition to funding, Big Bang Ventures leverages its extensive operational experience and worldwide network to actively help startups accelerate their growth. Formed in 2000, Big Bang Ventures invests between €0.3 to €3 million per company. Investments include Avinity (acquired by ActiveVideo Networks); DataCenterTechnologies (acquired by Symantec); Clear2Pay, a leading e-payments company and Q-layer (acquired by Sun Microsystems).
Paul Birch
Paul launched himself into the UK dotcom boom of ‘99 as an Internet entrepreneur. After a few failed ideas (and ‘one heck of a remortgage’) he first found success with BirthdayAlarm.com which Paul founded with brother Michael and his wife Xochi in 2001. They grew the business to 50 million members and revenue in the millions of USD, using the profits to found their next venture, the social network, Bebo that was sold to AOL for $850m in 2008. Currently Paul is focusing on investing in Internet and more traditional businesses. His Internet investments include: mybuilder.com,crunch.co.uk, growsonyou.com and gomix.com.
Mark Zaleski
Mark is an investor, senior executive and Director specialising in multinational, high-growth Internet businesses. Mark was Chairman and CEO of Dailymotion ‘07- ‘09. Under his leadership, Dailymotion became the world’s number one independent video-sharing site with over 60 million unique visitors and 1 billion video views per month. From ‘00-’07, Mark was CEO for QXL ricardo plc, a leader of online consumer trading platforms. He led QXL to profitability and several clear market leadership positions and to being the best performing stock on the London Stock Exchange’s Main Market in both ‘04 and ‘05. It was sold for nearly £1 billion in ‘07. Prior to QXL, Mark was President of Operations for Webvan, Inc. He launched the company’s operations and with other key officers raised a total of nearly $900 million including the company’s IPO in 1999. Mark is currently Chairman of DVDpost, a Venture Partner in Big Bang Ventures and an angel investor in several e-commerce businesses across Europe.
Robert Dighero
Robert has over 20 years operational experience, the last 14 working with the Internet. He is an e-commerce investor across Europe, having led a number of investment syndicates and taken on an array of board and advisory roles. Robert was previously CFO of QXL ricardo from ‘98 to ‘08, overseeing development from start-up to its eventual sale to Naspers. Robert was short-listed for CBI / Real FD, “FD of the Year” in ‘07 and the following year negotiated the £1 billion sale of QXL via a public take-over offer. Prior to QXL, Robert was CFO of AOL UK, worked in M&A at Bertelsmann and was a consultant at Bain & Co. Robert left Cambridge with a First class degree and a post-graduate degree in Engineering and has an MBA from Insead.
