The Management Team

David Long, co-founder and CEO
David has over 20 years experience as a serial entrepreneur in technology and distribution businesses. As a founder of Orion Media Marketing Plc early in his career, he gained a wealth of knowledge in developing, managing and exiting successful businesses. His past career also includes roles as Head of Europe for beenz.com, an online currency and marketing company and Head of Business Development for Hyperlink, a large web development agency. He holds an honours degree in Business Studies.

Matteo Berlucchi, co-founder and CEO of Livestation
Matteo has been leading Skinkers since it was founded in 2001. He recently handed over the running of the company to his partner and co-founder David Long in order to focus on Livestation.  Matteo is one of the leading entrepreneurs and innovators in Internet services in the UK with over 14 years of experience in the sector. His experience spans large online consumer services, online marketing and Internet technologies. Berlucchi has a doctoral degree in Theoretical Physics from the University of Padua (Italy) and spent three years researching in the field of Virtual Reality at Imperial College London (UK).

Rob Noble, COO
Prior to joining Skinkers Rob was most recently CEO and founder of Assured Medical Limited, the first successful provider of full private medical practice management services, which was successfully sold. Before this he was the CEO of the start-up Q-go UK Ltd and prior to this European Managing Director of Beenz.com. Rob also built and successfully sold a number of Internet services businesses following his time as an executive with IBM/Lotus and Digital. Rob is also a non-executive director of Jack Media, adviser to a number of web-based companies and charities as well as a part-time Lecturer at Cranfield School of Management on eBusiness practices.

Pat Geary, CMO
Pat Geary has over 20 years of international marketing experience across a range of large multinational and start up software and hardware businesses. Pat's previous experience includes international corporate marketing roles at Searchspace, a highly successful UK based software start up, where he was CMO, Sequent Computer Corp, now part of IBM, where he was Global Marketing Director for the Enterprise Migration Division and Digital Equipment Corporation where he was Director of product marketing worldwide for Digital’s enterprise systems business. He holds an honours degree in Computer Science.

James Beazley, CFO
James is a finance director with extensive experience in both large and small companies. Most recently he was with EADS, where he was CFO of Paradigm, a company which won a £2.5 billion PFI for global satellite communications. Other roles include, divisional finance director at P&O, managing growth in the dot.com arena and turn around work on behalf of Nomura. James is a chartered accountant with a degree in Economics from the University of York.

Roger Walton, VP Global Sales
Roger Walton brings more than twenty years of experience in technology sales, alliances and sales management to Skinkers, having worked in Europe and the USA he has a rare understanding of how countries and markets have differing needs, timescales and processes. Before Skinkers, Roger was vice president of business development and global alliances at Searchspace, the world’s leading transaction monitoring software provider, and previously general manager of DecisionPoint Applications in EMEA, a leading package data warehousing provider. Roger also held senior positions at Sequent, IBM and HP.

Chris Dawson, Head of Professional Services
After many years at an executive level within Unisys, Sequent and IBM, Chris moved to join the leadership team of UK software company, Searchspace.  After two years the company was successfully sold to a US venture capitalist. He completed a further year of excellent growth and profitability running the Global Professional Services group. Chris has experience in all aspects of the computer services business – systems integration, project management, outsourcing, software development, consultancy, customer education and software support.

Mark Stimson, Head of Strategy & Innovation
With engineering as a passion, but its practical application as his mantra, Mark has moved from the field of avionics at GEC (now BAe) as a senior systems engineer, through Multimedia at Asymetrix as Technical Director Europe to SumTotal  Systems as their General Manager and Head of Professional Services outside of the US before joining Skinkers as Head of Strategy and Innovation.  Mark has led a number of worldwide rollouts of Enterprise systems and as Head of Innovation, holds the practical exploitation of technology to make a real difference in the enterprise as his key goal.

Ali Ball, Head of Engineering
Ali has over 20 years experience in IT, from covering global IT strategy to building enterprise software. He has instigated multi million dollar outsourcing contracts and run global IT programs. Ali has been a session speaker at the HDI conferences in Dallas and London and brings a broad knowledge of IT processes and efficiency to Skinkers.

The Board

Philip Rowley
Philip was Chairman and CEO of AOL Europe, the interactive services, web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce provider until February 2007. Currently he is a non-executive director of ARM Holdings plc and HMV Group plc. Philip is a qualified chartered accountant and was Group Finance Director of Kingfisher plc from 1998 to 2001. Prior to that his roles included Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of EMI Music Worldwide. He was also the co-founder and Managing Director of Tribeca Technologies, a New York-based technology company specialising in ISDN connectivity and sound compression technologies.

Hitesh Mehta
Hitesh has extensive experience as a venture capital investor in high technology companies as well as significant operational experience. Prior to co-founding Acacia Capita, Hitesh was a General Partner of Amadeus Capital Partners Limited. He was involved in some of Amadeus’ most successful investments, including Entropic (acquired by Microsoft), Element 14 (acquired by Broadcom), and Whereonearth (subsequently acquired by Yahoo!). His operational experience includes being Managing Director of Fayrewood plc, an AIM listed company, where he initiated and implemented a new strategy that resulted in the company growing from £4m to £52m in revenues over a 12-month period following two highly successful acquisitions.

Bob Mann
Bob has spent over 25 years in the high tech industry. As European Managing Director he set up Siebel Systems in Europe and prior to that he was Vice President for Legent which had revenues of $175m. For the last six years Bob has led a portfolio career with board positions of companies in the portfolios of 3i, Advent Ventures, Amadeus Capital, Alliance Trust and Scottish Equity Partners. He was one of the founders of Foundation Network where he is currently interim CEO. He is also Chairman of VeriSIM. He sits on the technology advisory boards of Scottish Equity Partners and First Capital.

Jay Patel
Jay is Executive Director of SPARK Ventures and was part of its founding team in 1999. Jay is currently responsible for the investments in IMI, Skinkers, Unanimis, Complinet, MarketClusters and gamblingcompliance. Previously he was involved in Kobalt, Firebox, elata and mblox. He led the creation of a serviced office at Glasshouse Street and the sale of a substantial stake in Spuetz as well as many minor exits. He was previously a Director of NewMedia Investors and held executive positions at UBS Warburg and BSkyB.

David Long

Matteo Berlucchi

Rob Noble

James Beazley

Board Observers

Andrew Herbert
Andrew is Managing Director of Microsoft Research, Cambridge and a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer. He joined Microsoft Research in 2001 as an Assistant Director. Prior to joining Microsoft Research in 2001 he was Director of Advanced Technology at Citrix Systems Inc., In 1996 Andrew founded Digitivity Inc to develop a product to enable secure deployment of Java clients for business-to-business applications. Digitivity was a spin out from APM Ltd, a research / consulting company Andrew had founded in 1985. Before starting APM in 1985, Andrew was a faculty member in the Computer Laboratory at the University of Cambridge in England.

David Harnett
David is a Senior Director at Microsoft where he leads the operations and business development functions of Microsoft’s new Startup Business Accelerator (SBA) group.  The SBA builds internal startup businesses that will eventually become new Microsoft product groups.  He is the former leader of Microsoft's IP Ventures Group where he had worldwide responsibility for technology spin outs and new venture formation.  David joined Microsoft in 2001 and has also held positions in Microsoft’s Corporate Strategy and Marketing groups.  Prior to joining Microsoft, David worked in Hewlett Packard’s Corporate Development Group focusing on acquisitions and venture investments. David also spent time with Accenture in a management consulting role.