Investor Relations

Anthropics Technology Ltd was formed in 1998, and was initially funded by leading UK angel investors. In August 2001 Anthropics completed its first institutional funding round, taking on £5.7m in venture capital funding. Quester VCT, a leading UK venture capital firm with a long history of successful technology investments, led the round.

		Founded in 1984, Quester is an independent venture capital company specialising in unquoted growth companies and has more than £300 million under management. The company focuses on investments in two areas - information and communications technologies, and healthcare and life sciences. Quester manages institutional venture capital funds on behalf of international investors, funds from academic institutions including Oxford, Bath and Bristol Universities, four listed investment trusts, and an e-commerce fund for CGNU, the major insurance group. Both its institutional funds and its investment trusts have strong track records. Quester's approach is to support growth companies as constructive, responsive, value added investors, whilst providing investors with the best possible returns by continuing to be a preferred source of equity finance for growing businesses.
		Skandia Media Invest (SMI) was established in April 2000 as an investment company working in the new media market with special focus on interactive digital TV. SMI creates strategic and financial value by investing and developing companies in new interactive digital markets. Several private investment trusts have also invested in Anthropics.

Board Composition

Executive Board:

CEO Andrew Berend
CTO Mark Williams
CFO Alison Sparshatt

Non Executive Board:

John Ziemniak

John Ziemniak joined Anthropics as non-exec Chairman in May 2002. John also holds non-exec roles with APW Inc and Axiom Systems as well as a number of strategic roles in the venture capital industry.

John was previously Managing Partner and joint equity owner of Mentor International, a £20m revenue consultancy, where he provided advice and consultancy to major blue chip Telcos, Global Equipment Suppliers, Investment Banks and Venture Capitalists including Vodafone, Dell, BT, Compaq, Orange Orange, Virgin Mobile, and Ericsson and many other companies.

Before co-founding Mentor International, John was BT's Director of Policy, Planning and Performance, responsible for all of BT's Network activity, which included a £2.5bn annual capital budget and 5000 staff. John was headhunted by BT whilst he was Group Managing Director of GPT Network Systems now owned by Marconi, the worldwide optical networking, cable and access business of Marconi.

Jez San OBE

Jez San is one of Britain's most successful technology entrepreneurs. As a teenager, he founded Argonaut Software, one of Britain's most successful games companies in the early 80s. Since then, Argonaut has gone from strength to strength. It was split into two companies in 2000, (Argonaut Games plc and ARC International plc, the micro-processor tech company). Both companies went public in 2000. Jez serves as CEO of Argonaut Games plc but remains a shareholder in, and avid supporter of ARC.

At the age of 18 he co-wrote his first book entitled "Quantum Theory" and jointly developed Argonaut's first game, "Skyline Attack" on the Commodore 64. In 1986, Jez created Argonaut's first 16-bit game, "StarGlider", the title's success financed Argonaut's expansion and is said to be one of the first popular 3D computer games. Jez has helped Argonaut forge relationships over the years with many of the large console game companies, like Microsoft, Nintendo, Sega, and Sony and many publishers like Fox Interactive, Disney Interactive, Hasbro Interactive and Electronic Arts. He sits on the advisory board of the Game Developers Conference, is a founder & board member of TIGA (The Independent Games Association), advises Venture Capital companies (like New Media Spark) and has personally invested as a business angel in several game and tech start-ups involved in such diverse activities as video compression, digital privacy, next-generation cellular communications, and games creation technologies.

Jez was recently voted Entrepreneur of the year by the European Technology Forum (and Infoconomy magazine).

Simon Acland, Investment Manager, Quester

Simon, who joined Quester in 1988 and heads up the Technology investment team, has 19 years’ experience as a venture capital investor, preceded by a spell as a member of the management team of a start-up company which span out of Imperial College to develop hardware and software for controlling industrial robots and machine tools. This gave him valuable insights into the real issues facing start-up entrepreneurs and university spin-outs. He gained his financial grounding in corporate finance and M&A at merchant bank Kleinwort Benson, which he joined straight from Oxford University.

Contacts for enquiries:
Simon Acland, Quester
tel 020 7222 5472, simon.acland@quester.co.uk, 29 Queen Anne Gate, London, SW1 9BU

or Alison Sparshatt, Anthropics
tel 020 8758 8619, alison.sparshatt@anthropics.com, Unit 1a, Walpole Court Ealing Studios, Green London, W5 5ED

Disclaimer
All information contained on this web-site is for information purposes only. Nothing herein constitutes an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to purchase any financial instrument.
Although the information contained on this web-site has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable, neither Anthropics nor any of its officers, directors, members, or agents make any representations with respect thereto, and all information is provided "as is" without any warranty of any kind. Anthropics disclaims all express, implied and statutory warranties of any kind to any party including warranties as to the accuracy, completeness, merchantability or fitness for any particular purpose. Because of the possibility of human and mechanical error as well as other factors, Anthropics shall under no circumstances be liable for any errors or omissions. Anthropics shall under no circumstances be liable to any party for any lost profit or lost opportunity, indirect, special, consequential, incidental, or punitive damages whatsoever.