Talking about: Identifying and Targeting Large Markets
Why we wanted her to speak: Uber-smart, uber-connected. Straight-talking, forward-thinking, active and successful angel investor. Never thinks small. Loves data and what it is doing to the world. Brilliant chair.
Background
Sherry Coutu is an experienced executive, former CEO and angel investor who now serves on the boards of companies, charities and universities. The companies she serves range from fast growth private early stage to public and boards with turnover more than £ 1 bn. As an entrepreneur, Sherry established two businesses in the financial services industry. The first (acquired by Euromoney) has operations in more than 70 countries. The second (acquired by AMP) was floated in 2000 on London and Nasdaq and valued at more than $1 billion before being acquired.
Sherry loves working with great entrepreneurs solving problems that matter. Her current portfolio of interests include sitting on the Advisory Boards of Linkedin, Harvard Business School European Council, NESTA and Cancer Research UK. Her investments usually include ‘databases’, as a common theme. These range from movies (Lovefilm) to real-estate (Zoopla), energy consumption (Alertme), clean energy (New Energy Finance), water pressure (i20), investments (covester), professional contacts (Linkedin), builders (mybuilder), to how to get pregnant by monitoring trends in body temperature (CTC). Her latest ‘exit’ was New Energy Finance (acquired by Bloomberg).
http://uk.linkedin.com/in/coutu
For more information on the BLN Growth Forum, 15th July 2010, visit http://growthforum2010.thebln.com/session/
What a great resource!