Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen (born June 1973) is a Danish-Portuguese

venture capital Venture capital (VC) is a form of private equity financing provided by firms or funds to start-up company, startup, early-stage, and emerging companies, that have been deemed to have high growth potential or that have demonstrated high growth in ...

ist. He is currently a General Partner at Balderton Capital and a Governor of the

London Business School London Business School (LBS) is a business school and a constituent college of the federal University of London. LBS was founded in 1964 and awards post-graduate degrees (Master's degree, Master's degrees in management and finance, Master of B ...

. He worked as Vice President Mobile of

Uber Uber Technologies, Inc. is an American multinational transportation company that provides Ridesharing company, ride-hailing services, courier services, food delivery, and freight transport. It is headquartered in San Francisco, California, a ...

, based in

San Francisco San Francisco, officially the City and County of San Francisco, is a commercial, Financial District, San Francisco, financial, and Culture of San Francisco, cultural center of Northern California. With a population of 827,526 residents as of ...

, and served as Head of Mobile at

Dropbox Dropbox is a file hosting service operated by the American company Dropbox, Inc., headquartered in San Francisco, California, that offers cloud storage, file synchronization, personal cloud, and Client (computing), client software. Dropbox w ...

as well as Advisor at

WhatsApp WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger) is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and voice-over-IP (VoIP) service owned by technology conglomerate Meta. It allows users to send text, voice messages and video messages, make vo ...

Inc. until April 2014.

Education

Fjeldsoe-Nielsen graduated from the

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, UK, with an MSc in Mechanical Engineering in 1999 and received his MBA from the

. He also holds a BSc in Engineering from

King's College London King's College London (informally King's or KCL) is a public university, public research university in London, England. King's was established by royal charter in 1829 under the patronage of George IV of the United Kingdom, King George IV ...

(1998).

Career

Early in his career, he was Vice President of Market Development at Voicesignal Technologies Inc. Nuance acquired VoiceSignal in 2007. He went on to join 3Jam Inc., which was acquired by

Skype Skype () was a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for IP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also had instant messaging, file transfer, ...

. Fjeldsoe-Nielsen joined

when the company had less than 30 employees. He co-invented a method for integrating services on mobile phones (United States Patent 61/705,458). In 2014, he left Dropbox to join

. While at Uber, he invented a method for controlling the presentation of graphics on mobile phones depending on location information (United States Patent 9615208). He joined

Balderton Capital Balderton Capital is a venture capital firm based in London, UK, that invests in early-stage, technology and internet Startup company, startup companies in Europe. It is considered to be among the four-biggest venture capital firms in the English ...

as General Partner in 2015. In 2016, he wrote in the ''

Financial Times The ''Financial Times'' (''FT'') is a British daily newspaper printed in broadsheet and also published digitally that focuses on business and economic Current affairs (news format), current affairs. Based in London, the paper is owned by a Jap ...

'' about the trend of what he calls Valley Veterans returning home to Europe from Silicon Valley. His investments include Hiya,

Blue Bottle Coffee Blue Bottle Coffee, Inc., is a coffee roaster and retailer once headquartered in Oakland, California, United States. In 2017, a majority stake in the company was acquired by Nestlé (68%). It is a major player in third wave coffee. The company f ...

, Feast Kitchen, Zycada Networks, Soundtrack Your Brand,

Dubsmash Dubsmash was a video sharing social media service application for iOS and Android. Features Dubsmash allowed users to videotape themselves while lip syncing over audio clips and including sections of songs, movies, and famous quotes. Users cou ...

Pocket A pocket is a bag- or envelope-like receptacle either fastened to or inserted in an article of clothing to hold small items. Pockets are also attached to luggage, backpacks, and similar items. In older usage, a pocket was a separate small bag o ...

(acquired by

Mozilla Mozilla is a free software community founded in 1998 by members of Netscape. The Mozilla community uses, develops, publishes and supports Mozilla products, thereby promoting free software and open standards. The community is supported institution ...

), Labster, e-scooter company VOI Technology, and The Org. Fjeldsoe-Nielsen is a sponsor of the African Wildlife Conservation Fund and other initiatives focused on education in Africa.

References

External links

Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen bio
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fjeldsoe-Nielsen, Lars 1973 births Alumni of King's College London Living people Venture capitalists