Guy Whittle – Chairman

Guy Whittle is currently acting Chairman of Diginius. Former head of the Futures Group at RBC Capital Markets for EMEA and Asia, based in London. Guy was responsible for all derivatives sales and clearing operations for a business that is now high tech, low latency and real-time straight through processing (STP).

Guy’s background over 30 years in the financial services sector includes managing Equity and Bond trading platforms at the London Stock Exchange and MTS (Europe’s largest Government Bond trading platform). Guy was responsible for global sales and product development, introducing several technology solutions to successfully compete globally with Deutsche Borse, NYSE, NASDAQ and vendor platforms such as Bloomberg and TradeWeb.

Guy has extensive experience in the City managing teams to deliver efficient, cost effective and faster new technology solutions that replace old work practices and process.

David Turner

David Turner is a private equity investor with NBGI Private Equity, a mid-market private equity and venture capital group focused on developing high growth companies across Europe. David sits on the board of a number of companies providing guidance and strategic support to the management teams through the life of the investment.

David has spent his entire career investing in, financing or selling innovative growth companies. Prior to joining NBGI, David worked in the corporate development team of Exp//erian plc, leading the acquisition of data, analytics and software companies in digital marketing, fintech and online consumer.

David spent the early part of his career in corporate finance focused on the TMT sector, both in a fundraising capacity and executing M&A transactions.

Michael Renner

Michael Renner is an American tech entrepreneur and has been involved in building leading-edged, rapid-growth technology start-ups as well as creation of innovation divisions within enterprises. Positions he has held include CTO of Aspen, LLC a start-up ASP delivering ERP and CRM solution, VP, Technical Operation for Digex, then the largest and fastest growing internet hosting company.

Michael’s background offers a range of business, product, and technology insights gained over 30 years as an executive and entrepreneur in numerous enterprises and start-ups, providing business, organisational, product, and technology leadership.

As the Director of Commercial and Audience Products for the Daily Telegraph, Michael initiated the transformation of the technology department into an innovative product development organisation, covering all consumer facing digital products (Web, phone, tablet, social) and the supporting transactional platforms (CRM, e-commerce, marketing).

Michael was a founding member of LeverPoint, providing a unique approach to integrating off-shore software engineers into rapid software product innovation and delivery. After a successful merger in 2009, he stayed with the combined entity in Washington DC until joining The Telegraph in London.

Simon Birkenhead

Simon Birkenhead has 20 years experience in global marketing and business management. A former ad agency executive, he has held senior global roles at Google, 3M and Telefonica. At both 3M and Telefonica he launched new digital advertising companies and at Google he was the first hire into its Global Agencies Team, managing Google’s $1.6bn global business with Publicis Groupe.

Most recently he was CEO of Axonix, a mobile advertising technology company backed by Blackstone and Telefonica, which he grew from 1 to 32 employees. Simon has a high profile within the mobile ad industry and his advertising thought-leadership has been quoted within publications as varied as Wired, The Financial Times, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, TechCrunch and Business Insider.

He is an experienced advisor to a variety of technology startups. In addition to Diginius, Simon is a Non-Executive Director of Marfeel, a mobile optimisation and monetization platform for online publishers. He is a mentor at the Wayra tech incubator in London and has been a hands-on seed investor in a number of other tech firms.

In his spare time Simon enjoys writing movie scripts. His most recent award-winning screenplay, Zero Day, is currently in development with Hollywood production company, Playback Motion Pictures. Simon studied at Cambridge University and has an MBA with Distinction from London Business School.

Lukas Oberhuber

Lukas Oberhuber is currently Chief Technology Officer at Simply Business, a disruptive innovator in the insurance space. He joined in September 2010 with the aim of increasing flexibility and agility of the organisation through technology. Since joining he has overseen the complete replacement of the core legacy system while using Agile and Build-Measure-Learn. The outcome has been a transformation of the speed and efficiency of new product development.

Prior to Simply Business, Lukas was CTO at Forward Internet Group, where he was responsible for the creation and management of Agile development teams during a period of huge company expansion. He has also held enterprise architecture and program management roles at business and technology consultancy, Sapient, as well as founding internet telecoms company, SipAlive.

Lukas is a graduate of Computer Science at Harvard University, holds dual French and US nationality and has worked in the US, Italy, Germany and the UK. When he’s not building Agile teams Lukas enjoys creative writing and a keen footballer. He is married with two daughters.

Stewart Clements

Stewart is a highly accomplished senior executive with 17 years’ experience operating at board level in large complex organisations. A seasoned executive who has provided board level advice to both major multinationals and fast growth entrepreneurial companies.

Stewart is a Scottish Chartered Accountant, who has spent his career working in the technology sector as a consultant and latterly running a large business. He has experience of finance, marketing, and operations in various industries and involvement in major transformations, IT investment programs and change programs nationally and internationally.

Stewart has 34 years’ international experience with Accenture, the S&P 500, $60 billion market cap management consulting and information technology service company. From 2008 to 2015 Stewart was the Group Operating Officer of the $6 billion turnover Communications, Media and Technology (CMT) Operating Group.

Since 2015 Stewart has been involved as an investor, coach and advisor to a number of growth companies in the leisure, financial services, media and marketing sectors.

Joel Renkema

Joel is a highly experienced systems engineer within the telecom and communications industries. He has spent most of his career at Alcatel-Lucent, Mavenir, Cisco and Mitel, working in research and development with global development teams.