Simon Acland Angels, Dragons and Vultures: How to Tame the Venture Capital Beasts… Without Losing Your Company (N Brealey, 2010) started his working life in 1979 at Merchant Bank Kleinwort Benson. He soon found out that large businesses bored him, and joined the management team of a technology start-up company which span out of Imperial College to develop control systems for robots, machine tools and other flexible manufacturing systems.

The process of raising equity funding for that company gave Simon an insight into the world of venture capital, and in 1986 he crossed over to the dark side to join a focussed Information Technology Fund managed by the United Bank of Kuwait. In 1988 he joined Quester, and was instrumental in building that firm into one of the UK’s most active early stage venture capital investors. By the time Quester was sold in 2007 Simon was Managing Director and the firm had £250 million under management.

Simon has been a Non-executive Director of over 20 companies in the Quester portfolio. The aggregate Internal Rate of Return generated by these investments is almost 40% per annum, and the average multiple on cost is nearly five times. He has been involved with many flotations, two of the companies he backed entering the FTSE 250, and successful trade sales. He has also learnt from failures. He achieved his outstanding track record through the ups and downs of several economic cycles, including the volcanic eruption of the Internet in the late 1990’s and the ashes it left behind after 2000.