Brent Hoberman

Born in Cape Town, South Africa at the end of the swinging Sixties, Brent Hoberman’s peripatetic childhood took him first to Boston, New York then London. (With parents now based in NYC & Portugal.) A serial rule-breaker, he started a pirate radio station at Eton, got fired from his first “proper” job at a consultancy after working on his own venture instead of toeing the corporate line, and resolutely spurned the lure of Silicon Valley to launch his ventures in Blighty.
 
This ability to challenge the status quo is the source of his genius. Brent got the idea for lastminute.com while dating in the early nineties. He worked out that if he called a hotel and asked how many suites were free that night, he could haggle them down on price when there was lots of spare capacity – sometimes getting 70% off.  
 
He drafted a 12-page business plan for a business capitalising on these last-minute deals but filed it away in a drawer for two years – as a junior consultant at a digital strategy firm, he didn’t feel he was experienced nor that the market was large enough for him to take the plunge. By 1998, the internet had matured and Brent dared not wait any longer. He resigned from the founding team of QXL.com & convinced Martha Lane Fox, a former work colleague, to join him and lastminute.com was born.
 
lastminute.com became the poster child for the dotcom boom. Brent and Martha were shoved into the media spotlight and the business became a unicorn when it listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2000. Its IPO was record breaking: fastest company to go public, ever in Europe from inception, most oversubscribed IPO (43x), highest price increase during the roadshow.  The company was priced the day the NASDAQ peaked and suffered a 95% fall after listing but Brent remained as CEO and raised further significant capital, bought 14 companies, launched in 12 countries and finally sold to Sabre Holdings in a competitive process in 2005 for over $1.1 billion.
 
Brent created Founders Forum in 2005 because he felt that ambitious entrepreneurs needed a place where they could collaborate, share challenges and pool ideas if London were to retain its reputation for innovation. Founders Forum plays a critical role in supporting the best startups across the world and in the UK, via its flagship events, the key role it plays in London Tech Week, Tech Nation and Future Fifty.  Philanthropy runs at the core of FF as exemplified by its launch of Founders Pledge in 2015, a charitable initiative, where entrepreneurs commit to donate a portion of their personal proceeds to charity when they sell their business.

Through Founders Factory, a unique blend of investor, incubator and accelerator, Brent has supported more than 400 companies. Today, companies across the Founders Forum family support entrepreneurs across every stage of the lifecycle, helping them scale, do corporate deals, solve legal concerns, find talent and harness new technologies. Founders Forum events remain a hot ticket to this day, with past attendees including the world's best founders and global leaders.
 
Brent credits his passion for backing early-stage businesses to his father, an MIT-educated engineer turned fund manager, who became one of the pioneers of the New York venture capital scene in the early seventies. 

A visionary and passionate venture capitalist, Brent then joined forces with Skype co-founder Niklas Zennstrom, Bebo’s Michael Birch and other tech veterans to launch ProFounders, a venture capital firm focused on supporting disruptive technologies in 2009. He left in 2015 to launch a new  fund firstminute capital with Spencer Crawley which now has $500m in assets under management and is backed by over 130 unicorn founders.  firstminute capital has since made investments in more than 200 start-ups, such as the self-driving car business Wayve. 
 
Aside from his career as an investor, Brent also went on to found e-commerce furniture and accessories retailer Made.com with Ning Li in 2010. An e-commerce company based in London that designed and sold furniture and home accessories online, Made became a household name and listed in 2021 with a valuation of $1bn. Brent stood down the month before the listing voicing that he was not in favour of the IPO, and although the company continued trading and acquired accessories marketplace Trouva in 2022 it was forced to liquidate in November that year owing to a change in market conditions in the retail sector.
 
It's hard to imagine anyone better networked than Brent. He has held senior positions across myriad industries, from advisory roles at media behemoths Guardian Media Group and The Economist to cultural stalwarts The Royal Academy of Arts and the University of the Arts, London – he’s even done a stint at telecoms giant TalkTalk. He has advised over 4 prime ministers since joining Gordon Brown’s business council.  Over the years, he has won support from the likes of designer Philippe Starck and Pieter Bouw from airline KLM. His little black book would probably go for a song at auction.
 
Brent is married to Belgian interior designer Genevieve and they have three children, Jade, Celeste and Monty.