Julie Meyer

Julie Marie Meyer MBE (born August 28, 1966)[1] is an American businesswoman and the author of Welcome to Entrepreneur Country.[2] She is the founder of Ariadne group, the founder of EntrepreneurCountry Global Limited and CEO of Viva investment partners (Switzerland). Meyer was the co-founder of the networking club First Tuesday (1998-2000).[3] In 2009, she appeared as a Dragon on the online version of BBC's Dragons' Den.[4]

For similarly named people, see Julie Mayer.
For the Norwegian cyclist, see Julie Meyer Solvang.
Julie Meyer
Born (1966-08-28) August 28, 1966
Dearborn, Michigan U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationValparaiso University
INSEAD
OccupationEntrepreneur
Backer of Entrepreneurs
Author
Years active1998–present
Known forFirst Tuesday (1998-2000)
Ariadne Capital (2000-2017)
Viva investment Partners (2017-)
Dragons' Den: Online
Websitejuliemariemeyer.com

Early life and education

Meyer was born in Dearborn, Michigan. She grew up in the Sacramento, California area to father, Delbert "Del" Meyer, a pulmonologist who had a practice in Carmichael, California,[5] and mother Lorna Starck. Meyer's father also founded Pulmonary Medicine, Infectious Disease and Critical Care Consultants Medical Group Inc. in 1973 and served as Managing Director of the group for ten years, growing it to eight pulmonologists in total.[6]

In 1988, Meyer graduated from Valparaiso University with a B.A. degree in English Literature.[7] In 1997, she received an M.B.A. from INSEAD (Institut Européen d'Administration des Affaires).

Career

In 1988 Meyer moved to Paris. Initially, she taught English to French executives in the tech industry. From 1993 to 1996, she worked at Cunningham Communication in marketing.

After completing her M.B.A. Meyer joined NewMedia Investors (later known as NewMedia Spark/Spark Ventures) from 1998 to 1999.

First Tuesday

In 1998, Meyer co-founded First Tuesday, a networking forum in an effort to build an online tech community that connected entrepreneurs and investors. Meyer invested £35,000 and held a 22.5% shareholding stake when First Tuesday incorporated in February 2000. Five months later, in July 2000, along with co-founders investment banker Adam Gold, Mark Davies, journalists John Browning and Nick Denton who sold the networking forum First Tuesday to an Israeli company called Yazam for approximately £33 million, including £2 million in cash and remainder in shares. Yazam later sold the company for a large loss.[8][9]

Ariadne Capital - including Ariadne Capital Limited (In Administration)

In August 2000, Meyer founded the investment advisory firm Ariadne Capital, after the Greek princess Ariadne who was known for helping Theseus make his way through a labyrinth.

In 2002, Meyer announced the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs (ACE) Fund[10] which launched in 2012 as a £5.3 million fund.

In 2009, she became a guest on the short-lived online edition of the Dragons' Den TV series, although controversially it later arose that Meyer had failed to pay some of the investments she'd pledged.[11]

In 2010, Meyer was selected as one of 26 business people tasked with advising the British government on its business policies to encourage entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom.[12] In 2010 and 2011, she was listed as one of the "1000 Most Influential People in London" by the London Evening Standard. In 2011 Meyer appeared on ComputerWeekly's "50 most influential people in UK IT" list[13] and was given Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (MBE) status for her contributions to entrepreneurship in England.

In 2012, Meyer was part of an advisory committee led by entrepreneur James Caan called StartUp Loans that was funded with £82.5 million, aimed at reaching young people interested in creating UK startups.[14] In 2015 two Dragons squared up in court after Caan successfully claimed that Meyer had misappropriated £50,000 in funds that should have been directed to helping startups.[15]

Meyer has participated in many roundtable discussions about women in business and encouraging more participation by women on boards of companies.[16] She was opposed to Lord Davies' 25% quota threshold for women on the boards of FTSE 100 companies.[17]

Articles by Meyer have appeared in The Daily Telegraph,[18][19] Forbes, and The Independent.[20]

According to filings with the commercial register of the Canton of Vaud, Meyer served on the board of directors of the for-profit humanitarian development firm Vestergaard Frandsen until November 2016.

In 2015 and 2016 Meyer lost a string of high profile Court cases brought by former employees, lawyers, accountants and suppliers which led one High Court Judge to describe Ms Meyer as "not credible." [21]

In 2017, Meyer was pursued by former suppliers and advisors over unpaid bills.[22] In April 2018, Meyer failed to show up for the first of three hearings in Malta over these alleged unpaid bills, causing the magistrate in charge of the case to ask the Commissioner of Police to locate Meyer within 48 hours.[23] The police failed to do so, and on 9 May and 24 May 2018 Julie Meyer failed to appear for the second and third hearings.[24] On 11 May 2018 the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) suspended the investment services license of Ariadne Capital Malta Limited with immediate effect, highlighting multiple "serious breaches of license conditions".[25] These breaches included the absence of a Compliance Officer at all times, lack of cooperation with the MFSA, not having established an independent risk management function, and having inadequate resources to manage Alternative Investment Funds.[26] The license suspension means that Ariadne Capital Malta Limited may no longer provide services under Malta's Investment Services Act.

On 29 January 2018, the Administrator, Leonard Curtis, reported that Ariadne Capital Limited:[27]

  1. As at 31 December 2016 is set to report a deficiency of £6,762,604
  2. At the time of writing, there was not sufficient money available to pay for the administration
  3. That the administrator had received a large number of complaints against the director (Julie Meyer)

Viva Investment Partners

Since 2018 Meyer is the CEO of Viva investment Partners (Switzerland), board member in ODO Drive, a UK fleet management company.[28]

EntrepreneurCountry Global and ECTV

By 2018, YouTube had closed the ECTV (aka Julie Meyer) account, stating: "This account has been terminated because we received multiple third-party claims of copyright infringement regarding material the user posted."[29] Case was due to disagreement with production company, ECTV continues to air on EntrepreneurCountry website with exclusive reports and interviews from 2018-2020.[30]

In September 2008, she founded the business networking company EntrepreneurCountry Global as a subsidiary of Ariadne Capital: "a community of entrepreneurs, investors, corporate partners and media" which provides methodology and a marketplace where large, traditional enterprise businesses connect to exchange information for innovation in Europe and the UK.[31][32] According to Companies House Filings, in 2016 Ariadne Capital sold EntrepreneurCountry Global Limited, with almost £3 million accumulated losses, to the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs (ACE) Fund for £4.5 million.

Wikipedia

In March 2016, Meyer's Wikipedia page became the subject of news articles focused on paid editing when a publicity firm named Lansons Communications that Meyer's company had hired in 2014 allowed an intern to post on their behalf to the entry's Talk page. The intern had written to request advice on how to update her page. Ariadne filed a £100,000 lawsuit over the issue and later settled and withdrew the suit, paying an undisclosed sum to Lansons.[33][34][35]

Personal life

Meyer is a resident of Switzerland, and has lived in the Zurich since October 2018, and is a permanent resident. She is not married but has a long term partner

Awards and honours

Works and publications

Book
  • Meyer, Julie (2012). Welcome to Entrepreneur Country. New York: Constable & Robinson. ISBN 978-1-780-33896-5. OCLC 795120035.

Talks

Selected articles

References
  1. "Julie Marie MEYER". Companies House. GOV UK. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  2. Meyer, Julie (2012). "Chapter 5". Welcome to Entrepreneur Country. New York: Constable & Robinson. ISBN 978-1-780-33896-5. OCLC 795120035.
  3. Sorkin, Andrew Ross (16 July 2000). "Red Dot, Meet Green: If It's Tuesday, Network!". The New York Times. Retrieved 25 March 2016.
  4. Smith, Patrick (6 April 2009). "The dragon roars again: Julie Meyer, chief executive of Ariadne Capital". The Guardian. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  5. "About Dr. Meyer - Profile". Del Meyer, M.D. Archived from the original on 17 March 2016. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
  6. "DelMeyer, MD Profile". Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  7. "Distinguished Alumni". Valparaiso University. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
  8. Nisenholtz, Martin (14 March 2013). "Interview Subjects: Nick Denton". Riptide. Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  9. Byrne, Dominic (23 March 2009). "Dragons' Den Online - Dominic Byrne Interviews Julie Meyer - BBC Two". BBC. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  10. "Julie Meyer launches £20m fund: Ariadne founder raises debut venture capital fund". Startups. 7 September 2009. Retrieved 18 March 2016.
  11. "Dragon's Den: Online Dragon - Julie Meyer". BBC. 2014.
  12. Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street (4 May 2011). "Second meeting of Cable's Entrepreneurs' Forum". UK Government Digital Service. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  13. "UKtech50: Meet the 50 most influential people in UK IT". ComputerWeekly. December 2011.
  14. Prime Minister's Office, 10 Downing Street (28 May 2012). "£80 million start-up loans for new businesses". UK Government Digital Service. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  15. Scott, Brendan (28 March 2015). "Former Dragon's Den stars square up in court spat". The Telegraph. Retrieved 28 April 2018.
  16. Groom, Brian; Ford, Anna; Templeman, Miles; Meyer, Julie; Budd, Julia; Carnwath, Alison (22 February 2011). "Transcript: Women in the boardroom discussion". Financial Times. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  17. Groom, Brian; Rigby, Elizabeth (23 February 2011). "Davies steers middle path in quota debate". Financial Times. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  18. Meyer, Julie (1 Jun 2015). "Dot com entrepreneur Julie Meyer: 'Business is becoming more feminine'". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  19. Meyer, Julie (7 August 2010). "Individual capitalism is the way of the new world". The Daily Telegraph.
  20. Meyer, Julie (23 November 2009). "Julie Meyer: what the UK can learn from the US attitude towards entrepreneurialism". The Independent. Archived from the original on 13 March 2012. Retrieved 15 March 2016.
  21. Lynch, Russell. "Julie Meyer - 'entrepreneur's champion' who delayed paying up for three years".
  22. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/12/02/ex-dragon-julie-meyer-pursued-string-alleged-unpaid-bills/
  23. Macdonald, Vanessa (25 April 2018). "Julie Meyer fails to show up for unpaid salary cases". Times of Malta. Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  24. Agius, Matthew (9 May 2018). "Magistrate displeased at being emailed by Julie Meyer about her case". Malta Today. Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  25. "MFSA suspends Ariadne Capital Malta licence with immediate effect - The Malta Independent". www.independent.com.mt. Retrieved 2018-05-14.
  26. "Ariadne Capital has investment license withdrawn by MFSA". Times of Malta. 11 May 2018. Retrieved 11 May 2018.
  27. https://www.shareprophets.com/file_download/912/Joint+Administrators%27+Report+and+Proposals.pdf
  28. https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/fleet-industry-news/2020/04/23/new-management-team-for-drive-software-solutions
  29. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4kIDQl_lOc
  30. https://entrepreneurcountryglobal.com/ec-tv/
  31. "Julie Meyer: this is the era of design, not disruption". Red Herring. 2 September 2015. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  32. "About EntrepreneurCountry Global". EntrepreneurCountry Global. Retrieved December 9, 2017.
  33. Smith, Matthew Nitch (15 March 2016). "A PR firm is being sued for 'botching up' an investment fund's Wikipedia page". Business Insider. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  34. Chellel, Kit (14 March 2016). "How a Venture Capitalist's Bid to Edit Wikipedia Page Backfired". Bloomberg News. Retrieved 24 March 2016.
  35. Harrington, John (20 January 2017). "Ariadne Capital pays undisclosed sum to Lansons after withdrawing 'joke' £100k lawsuit". PRWeek. Retrieved 20 January 2016.
  36. "EY Entrepreneur Of The Year: 2000 Award recipients. UK winners - Julie Meyer, First Tuesday" (PDF). Ernst & Young. 2000. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  37. "50 Alumni Who Changed the World". INSEAD. 14 May 2010. Archived from the original on 19 November 2009. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  38. "2nd annual Wired 100: Positions 79-50. 69: Julie Meyer. Founder and CEO, Ariadne Capital". Wired. 6 May 2011. Retrieved 23 March 2016.
  39. "Warwick honorary degrees for leading environmental lawyer, UN adviser and award winning US playwright, and Monash University's Vice-Chancellor: ulie Meyer MBE Hon LLD (Honorary Doctor of Laws)". University of Warwick. 14 July 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2016.
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