Chris is a London-based entrepreneur, fintech investor, and mentor. He is founder and Managing Partner of Outrun Ventures, a leading investor of early stage fintech companies. He is also a Venture Partner at Techstars. Previously, he helped found and led Europe’s leading fintech accelerator in partnership with Techstars and Barclays Bank.
Chris spent the majority of his professional career in the United Kingdom. After ten years at GE Capital, in 2006 Chris co-founded Marlin Financial Group, a specialty finance business, that became one of the UK’s fastest-growing privately held companies. In 2014, Chris and his co-founders sold their business to a NASDAQ listed entity and a large U.S. Private Equity group.
Subsequent to the sale, Chris has been an active private investor and advocate of entrepreneurship, focusing primarily on disruptive fintech companies. He is the first/early investor in ‘banking as a service” platform Railsbank (now backed by Global Brain and Visa), neo-bank Monese (now backed by Paypal), Everledger (now backed by Fidelity and Tencent), Shieldpay (now backed by Visa), Smart Pension (now backed by JP Morgan), Kuda Bank (now backed by Target Global), Atom Bank (back by BBVA), and fast-growing insurtech’s Cuvva (RTP Global) and Marshmallow, to name a few. Chris also helped to launch what became Europe’s leading Fintech Accelerator as Managing Director of Techstars – the global platform for investment and innovation. Chris has made 140 fintech investments to date.
Chris also serves on the board of advisors of Crowdz (“supply chain financing as a service”), DIEM (“bank for the circular economy”), Quant Network (“blockchain ineroperoperability with 5 lines of code”) and Railsbank (‘banking as a service’). In 2018, Chris was named the Angel Investor of the Year by the UK Business Angel Association and in 2017 was named the most active fintech angel in the world by Fintech.Global.
