What a fantastic week! Our AGM and Investor Day held this year at The Wave at The University of Sheffield is an uplifting event reflecting on achievements for the previous year as well as our ambitions for 2025 and beyond. To be able to hear from Louis Taylor, Michael Moore and our very own Jim O’Neill as to the wider world context of what we are doing in part reflects the importance of the purpose behind Northern Gritstone. To then be able to hear from members of our investment team, Jessica McCreadie and Andy Naylor, along with our CIO, Marion Bernard with 6 of our current investee CEOs - it becomes a truly empowering event. As ever, we need to continue to deliver so onwards and upwards for the remainder of 2024 and the years to come. adsilico Limited, Cavero Quantum, Imperagen, Pencil Biosciences Limited, Opteran, Optalysys #profitwithpurpose. University of Leeds University of Manchester Innovation Factory The University of Manchester
It was a game of two halves, before the actual game of two halves ⚽ Yesterday Northern Gritstone held its third annual AGM & Investor Day at The University of Sheffield. Our keynote speakers focused on growth, capital to support growth, and the importance of research and innovation from our universities “Private capital is an engine for growth and a force for good across all parts of the country. Getting the capital matters” Thank you Michael Moore, Chief Executive of the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (BVCA) for highlighting the importance of growth for all regions in the UK and that we have the ingredients to galvanise growth - the universities, the entrepreneurial mindset and the pension fund capital. Louis Taylor, CEO of the British Business Bank, highlighted the Bank’s values and strategy, including growth for smaller businesses in deprived areas of the UK. The second half saw the CEOs of six early-stage science and technology companies highlight how their companies can improve our lives – whether our health outcomes or the security of our data. Thank you to: Amanda Smith from Pencil Biosciences Limited a biotech company developing an innovative non-CRISPR gene modulation platform technology that can edit the DNA in any cell Sheena Macpherson from adsilico Limited a computational medicine company aiming to define, disrupt and dominate the in-silico trials industry through its end-to-end platform David Rajan from Opteran, which has developed natural intelligence software to enable robots and autonomous vehicles to move around like nature (insects for example) Nick New from Optalysys which is creating a unique technology that can process data whilst still encrypted James Trenholme from Cavero Quantum which has developed secure quantum-safe software-based cryptographic keys Andrew Almond from Imperagen which is reimagining every step of the enzyme engineering process to develop the world’s fastest and most scalable enzyme-engineering platform Thank you Sheffield 💛 Our venue for 2025 is Manchester 💜 See you then. Photography by Laure Divisia-Astill
This was a truly inspiring afternoon - looking forward to being a bigger part of the NG family!
Chief Executive Officer at Parkwalk Advisors
1moThank you Duncan Johnson, Marion Bernard and the whole Northern Gritstone team for a fantastic day. Great companies and super interesting speakers. You’re doing a great job of progressing the national agenda.