IH

Ian Hogarth

founder and investor

London, England

Invests in

Work Experience

2021

  • Partner

    2021

    Plural is an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. Our aim is to have GDP-level impact on Europe, address systemic risks and reduce the opportunity gap worldwide through the companies we back.

  • Chair

    2023

    I was appointed in June 2023 reporting directly to the Prime Minister and Technology Secretary. The AI Safety Institute is the first state-backed organisation focused on advanced AI safety for the public interest. Its mission is to minimise surprise to the UK and humanity from rapid and unexpected advances in AI. It will work towards this by developing the sociotechnical infrastructure needed to understand the risks of advanced AI and enable its governance. This is a part-time and unpaid role.

2013 - 2021

  • Angel investor

    2013 - 2021

    investor in 100+ start-ups including: Academia.edu, Anthropic, Avidbots, Chorus.ai, Cleo, ComplyAdvantage, Cuvva, Disperse, Faculty, Helsing, Hopin, Incident.io, Kheiron Medical, LabGenius, Nested, Omnipresent, PostEra, Rossum, Second Nature, Tide Banking.

2007 - 2017

  • Chairman

    2015 - 2017

    http://soundboy.tumblr.com/post/136337729790/new-year-new-roles

  • Co CEO

    2015 - 2015

    http://blog.songkick.com/2015/06/04/songkick-crowdsurge/ Crash course in M&A! Very interesting and challenging to take two fast growing start-ups and combine their strategies, cultures, products, orgs. Really rewarding to see it all come together and speed up. http://blog.songkick.com/2015/12/17/songkick-triples-sales-in-europe-post-merger-raises-another-10m/

  • CEO

    2007 - 2015

    Co-founded Songkick when I was 25 with the two smartest and highest integrity people I knew (Michelle You & Pete Smith) & was CEO for next 8+ years. We hired & retained an incredible team who: - built the most comprehensive database of concerts in the entire world - developed the top rated Songkick web & mobile apps, used by music fans to discover concerts and buy tickets - unlocked various organic growth channels that scaled those apps to over 10 million monthly uniques - closed distribution deals with Spotify, MTV, Pitchfork, YouTube, SoundCloud etc - got us covered by NYT, FT, LA Times, WSJ, TechCrunch, CNBC, Billboard, Recode etc - grew ticket sales to over $100m, selling tickets for one in every 3 shows in London - tried some crazy experiments that were too early for their time, but I still believe...like Detour: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/arts/music/want-andrew-bird-in-your-town-try-crowdfunding.html?_r=0 - raised capital from world class investors including Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital (first ever London investment), Access Industries I’m proudest of the team & culture we built during this period and expect many people from that team to go on to start enduring companies of their own.

2006 - 2007

  • Associate Consultant

    2006 - 2007

    Mostly working with tech companies. Based in Asia and Silicon Valley.

  • Software Engineer (Technology Scholar)

    2000 - 2005

    Writing software. Sponsored through university as part of the Technology Scholarship scheme.