Get inspired by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs and innovators with OE’s Keynote Speaker Series.

Sir Alan Sugar (Amstrad), the late Dame Anita Roddick (Body Shop), James Dyson, Stelios (Easyjet), Luke Johnson (Pizza Express & Chairman, Channel 4), Charles Dunstone (Carphone Warehouse), Sir Tom Hunter (Hunter foundation), Richard Reed (Innocent) are just a few of the big names that have appeared as guest speakers.

Michaelmas Term 2009 Speakers

Daniel Ek – Founder of Spotify
7:30pm, Wednesday 28th October, 2009 – Magdalen Auditorium

Daniel Ek is a serial entrepreneur and a technologist who started his first company 1997 at the age of 14. Daniel’s most recent creation is a legal music streaming service Spotify. Currently valued at £154 million, Spotify has taken the music industry by storm, allowing instant listening to specific tracks or albums with almost no buffering delay. Will Spotify revolutionise the music industry? Come and have your say!

Richard Reed – Co-Founder, Innocent Drinks
7:30pm, Thursday 3rd December – Said Business School

Richard Reed is the co-founder of innocent drinks, the UK’s fastest growing food and drinks company and the no.1 smoothie brand in the UK. The business was started in May 1999 by Richard and two friends, and has a turnover of £35m, selling over 800,000 smoothies a week in the UK, Eire and Continental Europe.

Hilary Term 2009 Speakers

Julie Meyer – Founder & CEO of Ariadne Capital & Founder of First Tuesday
February 12, 2009 – 6pm Said Business School

Julie Meyer has 20 years of investment and advisory experience, helping start-up businesses and industry standards to emerge and establish themselves. As Chief Executive of Ariadne Capital, she has overall general and financial management responsibility for the group which she founded in August 2000. Ariadne is an investment and advisory firm focused on the Software and Services, New Media, Communications and Life Services sectors. Julie is well-known for founding First Tuesday, the largest global network of entrepreneurs, which many credit for igniting the Internet generation in Europe. It was sold for $50 million in cash in and shares in July 2000. Julie has raised hundreds of millions of capital for start-ups in addition to overseeing another $150 million of seed capital found for start-ups through First Tuesday. Named a “Global Leader of Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum and one of the top 30 most powerful women in Europe according to the Wall Street Journal, Julie’s mission is to back the best entrepreneurs in Europe with global ambitions. She was awarded “Entrepreneur of the Year” Award in October 2000 by Ernst & Young U.K.

Brent Hoberman, Founder of Lastminute.com & MyDeco
TO BE RESCHEDULED****

Brent co-founded lastminute.com in April 1998 with Martha Lane Fox and was CEO and took the company to profit and gross bookings of over $2bn. The company floated in March 2000 when the dot-com bubble was at its peak – the IPO was 40 times oversubscribed and the price increase during the process was a record for a UK company. lastminute.com acquired 14 businesses after the IPO to supplement the annual growth of the core brand which was over 100% from 1998 – 2004. In 2005 lastminute.com was sold to Sabre for $1.1bn.

Brent most recently founded another VC-backed internet based startup, mydeco, the online interiors site that will revolutionise the way we shop and design for our homes. He is a Governor of University of the Arts College, London and a non-executive board director of Guardian Media Group. From January, 2007 he took on the role of Non-Executive Chairman of Wayn.com – a travel and leisure social network with over 13 million members. Brent is also an angel investor in several internet companies including Viagogo, Wayn.com and moveme.com.

James Caan, CEO of Hamilton Bradshaw, Serial Entrepreneur & Dragon
February 26, 2009 – 5.30pm Said Business School

REGISTRATION FULL

James Caan is CEO of private equity firm Hamilton Bradshaw and has been building and selling businesses since 1985. Having founded the Alexander Mann Group in 1985 and co-founded executive head-hunting firm Humana International with his partner Doug Bugie, 2001 Caan was awarded the BT Enterprise of the Year award and the PricewaterhouseCoopers Entrepreneur of the Year 2003.

Setting up London-based Hamilton Bradshaw in 2004, the private equity company specialises in buyouts, venture capital, turnarounds and real estate investments and development opportunities in both the UK and Europe.  In October 2007, Caan joined the panel in the fifth series of BBC Two’s Dragons’ Den and filmed series six transmitted this Autumn soon to be followed by with a 1 hour special ‘Outside of The Den’ following up on Den Investments as well as exploring both his business and personal journey.  September 2008 saw James publish his Autobiography The Real Deal – an incredible story of his remarkable life. From his childhood as a Pakistani immigrant to the phenomenal success of his first company, this book traces James’s journey to both financial and personal maturity. Published by Virgin it deals with his fear at realising his goals too early, and offers a frank account of what success at 30 really means.

A married father of two daughters, Caan has homes in London, the South of France and Pakistan.