Founders

Damian Murphy is Professor in Sound and Music Computing at AudioLab in the Department of Electronic Engineering, University of York, where his research focuses on the development and creative application of immersive audio and virtual acoustic modelling. He is an active sound artist, and the Director of the £15m XR Stories Arts and Humanities Research Council funded Creative Industries R&D Partnership exploring the next generation of interactive and immersive storytelling for the UK’s creative screen industries.

Based in UK, Dave Haynes is partner at FOV Ventures, backing founders building the Metaverse. Dave previously led HTC’s $100m Vive X fund in EMEA and was part of the investment team at Seedcamp (Fund III). Metaverse-related portfolio and angel investments include Wave, LIV, ReadyPlayerMe, Crucible and many others. Prior to investing, Dave founded two of his own startups and was part of the founding team of SoundCloud.

I am an experienced business leader with extensive experience of building trusting relationships and turning these into valuable partnerships and successful outcomes. My passion lies in connecting people, ideas and technology to solve problems and build unforgettable experiences with new technology.

Nadia is an investor and business developer who has spent over ten years at the RCA developing enterprise and entrepreneurship programmes and supporting graduate entrepreneurs.
After a twenty-year commercial career in the biotechnology sector, Nadia has a cross sectoral focus on innovation. She invests in and supports the creation and growth of new design-led ventures and she trains and mentors more mature non-design businesses internationally to help them to innovate and grow. She leads the Royal College of Art's entrepreneurship centre, InnovationRCA and is responsible for the direction of its start-up accelerators. In 2015 she set up AngelClubRCA to connect investors and UK companies seeking early stage investment. She has worked with over 200 companies from a very diverse range of sectors and, on behalf of the Royal College of Art, has invested in over 60.
Nadia has worked in Europe, the USA and her roles have also included responsibility for operations in Asia. A PhD life scientist, with an MBA, Nadia's broad commercial experience, at international Corporates and with start-ups, have given her a breadth of experience from which she draws when working with founders.

Dr Alex Attridge is a Project Manager for the Digital Validation and Verification theme of WMG's centre for the High Value Manufacturing Catapult. Dr Attridge has over 10 years' experience in automotive R&D, with specific expertise and publications in the fields of immersive design visualisation, human machine interface evaluation, and quality inspection and metrology. Dr Attridge currently manages WMG's metrology and visualisation Centre of Excellence and a number of R&D projects with industrial partners.