Personality of the year: Tony Askew

As chairman of the new corporate venturing group of UK trade body the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association, Tony Askew has been thrust centre stage in promoting corporate venturing in the UK and so is this year’s winner of the Global Corporate Venturing Personality of the Year award,

As corporate venturing become more important in a shrinking European and UK venture capital market, this role could have significant ramifications for the wider venture industry. Askew’s appointment has come as corporate venturing is being more widely recognised across the venture industry’s main political bodies.

Also In the past year, trade body the European Private Equity and Venture Capital Association appointed Robert Bosch Venture Capital’s Markus Thill to chair its corporate venture roundtable and US trade body the National Venture Capital Association appointed Claudia Fan Munce as the first corporate venturing executive to sit on its board.

Askew’s success caps a strong period during which he has driven forward Reed Elsevier Ventures, the corporate venturing unit of the Anglo-Dutch publisher, as chief executive, and the unit has picked strong investments during his tenure, which make him a worthy winner of our personality of the year award.

Reed Elsevier Ventures was an early investor in Palantir, a big data analysis company that secured a $2.5bn valuation and $400m in annual revenues in 2011, according to news provider TechCrunch. It subsequently raised a further $56m last year.

Askew is also on the boards of Babylon, the world’s most downloaded translation tool, First Life Research, PartMiner, Spacecurve and Tolven.

Askew and his co-partner Kevin Brown moved to Reed Elsevier Ventures at the end of 2000, along with his predecessor as head, Diane Noble, who is now chief executive of UK government-backed emerging markets investor Commonwealth Development Corporation.

Askew, in an interview for our Global Corporate Venturing Powerlist 100, last year, which documented the most important people in the industry, said: “We found a welcoming home here, as Reed Elsevier wanted us to create a successful, long-term corporate venturing capability. We designed the fund as a financial VC [venture capital firm] but with a meaningful strategic angle.”

He added: “The financial focus means we take board seats and our compensation includes carried interest [a share
of investment profit], like traditional VCs, which aligns us well with entrepreneurs and other investors.”

Askew first became a venture capitalist at Softbank, a Japan-based internet company, after working as a corporate
and an entrepreneur.

Other past activities included running electronic publishing for Random House, which included co-investing in a Los
Angeles-based new media company alongside film maker Stephen Spielberg. Later, at mobile operator Cellnet, now
O2, he co-developed and launched the world’s first wireless internet service provider, Genie, which grew quickly to
4 million users across Europe.

Askew’s career has been a colourful one. We expect the next few years will be even more interesting, as he remains
busy giving corporate venturing a voice at the political level and also as some of the corporate venturing unit’s
investments, especially Palantir, move towards an exit.