Alex van Someren

Amadeus Recruits Serial IT Entrepreneur for Seed Investment

1st October 2010 - London and Cambridge, UK

Serial entrepreneur Alex van Someren has joined Amadeus Capital Partners as a Partner in the Amadeus & Angels Seed Fund, where he will invest in and support early-stage technology companies in the UK. The Amadeus & Angels Seed Fund is a £10 million fund dedicated to delivering superior investment returns by building innovative technology companies into globally significant businesses. The fund has invested £5m in six companies, including XMOS, AiHIT, Linkdex, Synature, Ambient and oneDrum.

Alex brings significant experience to Amadeus' seed portfolio companies in their quest for high growth. He has been a technology entrepreneur for more than thirty years, with two of his own companies having achieved exits for investors via the public markets. In 1996, he co-founded IT security company nCipher where he spent 11 years as CEO, leading the business to a public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 2000, thereby achieving over 20x return for his investors. nCipher plc (formerly LSE:NCH) was subsequently acquired by Thales SA. In 2008, he joined the UK Trade & Investment's Global Entrepreneur Programme, where he has worked extensively with several business accelerators and incubators and mentored many early-stage technology companies across Europe and the United States.

Commenting on his move to Amadeus, Alex van Someren said: "I'm very pleased to be joining Amadeus to help invest the Amadeus & Angels Seed Fund and to work with its companies. Amadeus has shown its dedication to funding innovative technologies in Europe for many years. Personally, I believe this is an extremely exciting time to be investing in early-stage technology, as smaller sums of money than ever before are required to build businesses of scale. I'm looking forward to bringing my own contacts and experience to the Fund's portfolio companies, and helping to deliver superior financial returns for business founders and investors."

Amadeus Managing Partner, Anne Glover, said: "We are delighted to have attracted Alex into our investment team. He represents the kind of experienced entrepreneurial talent that can greatly help our European early stage companies."

Amadeus & Angels Seed Fund CEO and Partner, Laurence John, added: "Alex has hands-on experience of technology start-ups from foundation through to exit - experience that's very rare, and very valuable, to a seed fund and its investments. I'm confident he'll add an exciting dimension to our portfolio and funds."

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For further information, please contact:
Chantal Ligertwood, PR for Amadeus, +44 (0)7976 229 210

NOTES TO EDITORS

About Amadeus

Amadeus Capital Partners is one of Europe's leading technology venture capital firms. Since its inception in 1997, the firm has backed over 60 companies in industries that include communications and networking hardware and software, cleantech, medtech, computer hardware and software, media, and e-commerce. Amadeus has £470m under management. Global businesses built by Amadeus include CSR plc (LSE:CSR), the leading producer of single chip bluetooth radios for short range connections, and Solexa Ltd, the developer of next generation genetic analysis systems, merged into Illumina, Inc. (ILMN) to create the world-leader in gene-sequencing technology.

The Amadeus and Angels Seed Fund (AASF) focuses on seed stage technology companies with a base in the UK. AASF is jointly funded by Amadeus, Capital for Enterprise Limited [BERR], business angels and private investors. AASF has access to proprietary, high-quality deal flow, complemented by the discipline of a large VC fund and the expert knowledge of business angels. For more information, please visit www.amadeuscapital.com