Disappearing, Angel Investing, Frog Capital, and What Shirin Dehghan Has Learned Along the Way

Shirin Dehghan is a hugely successful entrepreneur, having built Arieso and sold it to JDSU. In part 2 of her podcast, we hear how she decided to take a year out before getting bored and subsequently gravitating back to the start-up ecosystem. She has made a number of angel investments, including a lesson inletting her guard down as she invested in a team she knew well. Shirin is now a senior partner at Frog Capital, where she sits on four start-up boards. A tip to entrepreneurs, “Don’t turn up to a board meeting with a laundry list of problems without thinking of possible solutions. Your board will lose faith quickly”. 

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Shirin founded, expanded and subsequently sold mobile communications business Arieso. A University of Southampton Engineering alumna, she has over 20 years’ experience in the software and mobile communications industry. She is a senior partner at Frog Capital where she sits on the board of Skimlinks. She is also the Non-exec Chairwoman of Opensignal, a UK based company that sets the gold standard for mobile experience globally.She is a passionate advisor and board member to companies wishing to transform their business. As CEO, Chairwoman and Investor leading start-up, medium size as well as blue chip companies to create new markets and build winning teams to bring disruptive products to the mobile industry. Taking a partnership approach with key stakeholders at board level, cultivating many close relationships to help deliver real value to customers. Shirin is the winner of numerous awards including Blackberry Woman in Technology, Best Woman in Mobile, Business Woman of the year 2013, and European Entrepreneur of the year 2013. Produced by Mark Cotton, Twitter.

Podcast links:

Shirin Dehghan

Arieso - UK-based startup that makes location-aware networking software to improve mobile carriers’ network performance.

OpenSignal - is the global standard for mobile experience trusted by consumers, and industry stakeholders. They offer a modern and proven way to measure mobile network performance.

Frog Capital - invests in software enabled scale-up stage tech companies in Europe.

SceneSkope - personalise Brand and Visitor Engagement across every digital experience. Making interactions unique and personal.

Rovco - Use 3D to gain complete Ocean Insight. Our high-res MBES, 4K video and live 3D vision systems provide you with unmatched levels of measurable information, accuracy and clarity.

19 SEPTEMBER 2018COMMENT

The NBN Entrepreneurship and Leadership podcast aims to educate and entertain, sharing insights based on the stories of carefully selected guests - entrepreneurs and leaders - in the atmosphere of an informal conversation.

About the NBN
The New Books Network was founded in 2007 as a podcast interviewing the authors of academic books, and has grown to the largest author interview podcast in the world publishing 12 podcasts a day in more than 90 specialist areas, with over a million downloads a month. Read about the founder Marshall Poe and the NBN here. In recent years it has expanded beyond its “author interview origins”.

About Peter Cowley

Peter Cowley, a Cambridge university technology graduate, founded and ran over a dozen businesses in technology and property over the last 40 years. He has built up a portfolio of 75 angel investments with nine good exits (including one that is 107X his investment and returned all the cash he has invested) and thirteen failures. He is a board member of the Global Business Angel Network (GBAN), President Emeritus of the European Business Angel Network (EBAN), former chair of the Cambridge Business Angels and was UK Angel of the Year 2014. He has mentored hundreds of entrepreneurs and is on the board of nine startups.

In 2011, he founded and ran Martlet: a Corporate VC, investing (currently £10M) from the balance sheet of Marshall, a £2.5bn revenue Cambridge engineering company. He is a fellow in Entrepreneurship at the Cambridge Judge Business School and is on the investment committee of the UK Angel Co-fund. He has also had 16 years’ experience as chair, treasurer and trustee of the boards of seven charities.

With his son, Alan, Peter is sharing his and others’ experience and anecdotes in order to educate angels and entrepreneurs via The Invested Investor which publishes two books and 75+ podcasts. A selection of Invested Investor podcasts are republished here on the Entrepreneurship and Leadership channel on the NBN. This is one of them. Peter is a public speaker on entrepreneurship and angel investing throughout the world.

Linkedin Peter’s webpage.