Our Team
Doers and thinkers from the world of startups and innovation
Ian Merricks - Chair and Founder
Ian founded and sold media and digital businesses between 1996–2007; before moving into early stage investment (from seed to Series B). He co-founded White Horse Capital, which provides capital, advisory services and M&A support for high growth tech companies, helping clients to raise £350m+ so far.
He also founded, and now proudly chairs The Accelerator Network which runs a variety of accelerator programmes usually with government and corporates, and has supported 1,000+ startups & scaleups, to accelerate growth and raise equity from seed to Series A. As a result Ian was named in the Top 100 most influential Global tech accelerator leaders.
As founder of The Accelerator Network, his startup support passion has seen him work for and with UK Government to Ministerial level, at 10 Downing Street, and even Buckingham Palace. He has also overseen accelerator programmes in Taiwan, Japan, Armenia, Slovakia, Lebanon, Iceland and elsewhere.
Ian remains an active investor with a broad portfolio of early stage tech investments. He is a member of the advisory board of the UK Business Angel Association, as well as a General Partner of the British Venture Capital Association and a founding shareholder of SFC Capital S/EIS fund.
Duncan Knight - Programme Director
Duncan, Programme Director, is an exited entrepreneur who most recently turned his focus to supporting startups and scaleup stage companies on their growth and investment strategy.
He has worked for more than 25 years in B2B enterprise business in Australia, Asia, Europe, UK and the US. Duncan co-founded and managed 2 businesses for 15 years. Most recently as the CEO and CTO of MyCognition, a disruptive HealthTech startup.
Previously, Duncan co-founded BizCarta Australia, an IT services consulting firm, which specialised in working with blue-chip organisations. Duncan developed BizCarta Australia from start-up through to sale. Duncan served on the board of the Sydney chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organisation for 3 years and has been a technology advisor to a number of companies involved in M&A activities.
Luigi Meschini - Head of Seed Investment
Luigi, Head of Seed Investment, Accelerator Funding Network looks after Investor Relations at The Accelerator Network and helps advise programme cohorts and alumni. He has previously launched, and successfully exited a startup based in Italy. Luigi started off his career as a lawyer before he saw the startup light!
Charlotte Simmons - Engagement Manager Marketing & Community
My unconventional ‘squiggly career” started when I graduated from university and worked for a fast growing startup, being the first employee in the inbound sales team at Groupon I was working for the business whilst it grew from 100 to over 1000 people in the space of a year. I was surrounded by entrepreneurial people and was inspired to leave and build my own startup from scratch in the automotive industry. I raised money through crowdfunding to help my business grow and took part in The Accelerator Academy to learn how to take my company to the next level.
The experience of running my own business gave me what I needed to enter the world of startups and I worked for The Bakery to match tech startups with large corporates to drive innovation. Since then I’ve worked for a number of different fast growing startups with a focus on lead generation and community building through a 360 degree marketing strategy.
I now work with The Accelerator Academy focussing on helping startups & scale-ups with their growth and Seed to Series A investment journeys.