Team
Josh Bell
Josh is a General Partner at Dawn and leads our Fintech investments. Josh works with portfolio companies iZettle, Divido, Property Partner, Sonovate, Zumper, Obillex and Fanduel.
Before joining Dawn in 2007, he worked with McKinsey & Company, managing teams that advised boards of Fortune global 500 financial institutions based in London, Geneva, Amsterdam and New York. While at McKinsey, Josh was recognised within the firm as a leading financial services expert in Europe. Within his retail and wholesale banking work, Josh devoted significant time to informing clients on the impact of new technologies on their industries, and helping to assess and implement these technologies for their businesses.
In addition to his private sector client work, Josh was also integral to supporting McKinsey’s relationship with the World Economic Forum, leading McKinsey support for the WEF’s financial services knowledge initiatives and activities, principally for the Davos conferences in 2006 and 2007.
Josh was a Graduate Scholar at Oxford University in Mathematics. He was subsequently a Research Fellow at Harvard University in Economics and Game Theory, publishing papers in Game Theory and IT Security journals before studying operational research and advanced financial modelling at Cambridge University, as part of an MPhil in Statistics; his MPhil research was supported by the Rand Institute of Santa Monica, California.
Dan Chaplin
Dan is responsible for the sourcing, due diligence, and execution of Dawn’s FinTech and B2B software investments across Europe and is closely involved with a number of Dawn’s current portfolio companies.
Dan spent the formative years of his career working in the corporate finance department of J.P. Morgan in London. Advising companies across banking, payments, insurance, and asset management on M&A execution and raising institutional capital, Dan worked with both financial services leaders as well as burgeoning FinTech challengers gaining a deep appreciation the opportunity and challenges thrown up by technological innovation for older and newer players alike. With this background, Dan has since been closely involved in Dawn’s investments in the consumer lending, payments technology and cybersecurity spaces.
Dan read Modern History at Oxford University where he graduated with First Class Honours and won prizes for outstanding performances in his final exams and dissertation. He went on to earn his MSt with Distinction in Modern British & European History at Oxford the following year.
Eylem Dixon
Eylem is the financial controller at Dawn and works alongside Archna who manages the operations and finances of the business.
Before joining Dawn she was the financial controller of Praxity Global Alliance which is one of the world’s leading membership organisation for independent assurance, tax & advisory firms. Prior to this Eylem gained significant experience in various financial controller roles to implement and maintain core financial processes.
Eylem qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant whilst working at Insight Investment, a global asset management company.
Norman Fiore
Norman co-founded Dawn Capital in 2007. Since that time he has invested in several of Europe’s leading SaaS businesses including Mimecast [MIME], Collibra, Showpad and Automile and in B2B/B2C e-commerce business Gelato.
Prior to Dawn, Norman was Partner at the Reuters Greenhouse Fund, Reuters Plc’s global technology VC fund. At Reuters, Norman co-managed one of the largest corporate technology funds that invested over $450M in over 80 early, mid and late stage companies globally.
In 2001, Norman and his fellow partners acquired the Greenhouse Fund and subsequently sold companies in the online media/advertising sector (Advertising.com (to AOL), Forbes.com (to PE buyer), Bitpipe (to TechTarget), Moreover (to VeriSign)), internet services (WhereOnEarth (to Yahoo), UltraDNS (to NeuStar), Radialpoint (to TA), Investis (to PE buyer)) and software (Packetvideo (to NextWave), ID2 (to Sonera), Metamerge (to IBM), Persistence (Nasdaq IPO, now PRGS).
Prior to Reuters, Norman worked at Bain & Company in London, initially in the Telecoms practice and then the Private Equity group.
Norman is a graduate of Stanford University with dual BS and BA degrees in Engineering and Economics and holds an MBA with distinction from INSEAD business school.
Henry Jefferies
Henry is responsible for the sourcing, due diligence, and execution of Dawn’s fintech and B2B software investments across Europe.
Henry joined Dawn Capital from the Goldman Sachs TMT team in London, where he spent the first 4 years of his career advising telecoms, software and fintech companies on M&A, strategy and capital raising.
Henry graduated with Double First Class Honours in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oriel College, Oxford.
With mixed British / Singaporean heritage, Henry has also spent time in Singapore and Beijing.
Joyce Liu
Joyce focuses on Enterprise Software across Europe.
Before joining Dawn in 2017, she was a Senior Associate and part of the Founding team at Columbia Lake Partners, a London-based fund seeded by the partners of Bessemer Venture Partners to provide growth loans to Series A/B European technology companies. Prior to this, she worked as a Data Scientist at London-based TRULY Experiences. Before moving to the UK, Joyce lived in the US while working at Ares Management in Los Angeles and in the Leveraged Finance team at J.P. Morgan in New York.
Joyce graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (BA), Honours Business Administration (with distinction) from the Ivey School of Business, Western University in Canada. She is a member of the Organizing Committee of the C100UK, the London Ivey Chapter Alumni Board, and Founders of the Future.
Henry Mason
Henry focuses on B2B software and FinTech throughout Europe, with a particular leaning towards data and security. Among recent investments, he is closely involved with: Garrison (secure remote browsing, $30m Series B), Quantexa (data analytics, $20m Series B) and ZIVVER (secure messaging, $12m Series A).
Previously, Henry worked in consultancy for clients in financial services and the public sector, where he was particularly involved in digitalising insurance and in the transformation of government towards user-centric, digital-first services. His experience from that time includes working within agile product teams and on security strategy.
Before that, Henry read Classics at Oxford, where he graduated with the best result in the year and won numerous university prizes. Delving further into the ancient world, he gained an MSt with Distinction, followed by a PhD, in Greek language and literature.
Haakon Overli
Haakon started Dawn Capital with Norman Fiore in 2007. He has extensive investing, operational and venture capital experience. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded Self Trade – an online sharedealing platform – and acted as the CEO for the highly successful British part of the business and was a member of their European Executive Board. Self Trade was floated in April 2000 and then sold in October 2000 to DAB (a subsidiary of HVB of Germany) for €911M.
Haakon has served on the boards of Self Trade and Wonga.com amongst others, and currently represents Dawn’s interest at Conversocial, Crate.io, LeadDesk, Minute Media and Neo Technologies.
Prior to formalising early stage investing at Dawn, Haakon worked with early stage companies from their first commercial efforts through to managing accelerated growth, often by serving as an interim manager or board member. They include G-Cluster (sold to Softbank Broadmedia) and Lateral Logic (sold to Electronic Arts).
Mr. Overli studied Mathematics at the University of Oslo and holds a B.A. (Hons) in Economics from University of Durham.
In his investment-banking career when the world was covered in ice, Haakon was a Director and Co-Head of Technology Investment Banking at ING Barings. Prior even to that, Haakon worked for JP Morgan in the M&A departments of New York and London.
Evgenia Plotnikova
Evgenia is responsible for sourcing, due diligence and execution of investments in B2B software and fintech across Europe.
Prior to joining Dawn, Evgenia was a VC at Atomico, where she helped spearhead the firm's efforts in France. Before joining the world of VC, Evgenia was an investor at TPG Capital, leading US private equity fund, and worked at J.P. Morgan in London and Dubai.
Evgenia holds a Masters degree in Finance and Strategy from SciencesPo Paris and studied abroad at the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania. At SciencesPo, she worked at JCSP, the university’s consulting organisation, where she supported a number of entrepreneurs in their operational projects and research. Evgenia is fluent in French and Russian, has lived in 5 countries and travelled to 55 (and counting). In 2017, Evgenia was named to Forbes’ “30 Under 30” list of leading young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers.
Stefan Schmidt
Stefan is responsible for sourcing, due diligence and execution of investments in B2B software and fintech across Europe.
Prior to joining Dawn, Stefan was with Flexport, a San Francisco based freight startup, where he developed the business model for their mobile trucking app and conducted extensive user testing, leading to significantly improved partner compliance. He also established the costing and pricing model for the deconsolidation warehouse in Los Angeles.
Before that Stefan worked with the Boston Consulting Group, where he launched a logistics startup with BCG Digital Ventures. This involved defining the go-to-market approach, conducting beta testing with users, making key early hires, and ensuring complete regulatory and legal alignment.
Other projects at BCG included: improving the operational efficiency of a major aircraft production line; reducing a wholesaler’s working capital requirements through an innovative tech-driven approach; and improving the performance of a diamond mine in Botswana.
Stefan holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where he was president of the Aviation Club and was involved in a Boston-based satellite startup. He also has a Masters Degree in Aerospace Engineering from Imperial College London and has spent one year working with underprivileged children at a non-profit in Indonesia.
Archna Tharani
Archna is the CFO at Dawn and manages all the operations and finances for the business.
Before joining Dawn she was the CEO of an award winning business, Oculus Accountancy, which delivers accountancy services to a range of SME clients using all the latest technology solutions. She is a speaker on technology solutions for the accounting industry and has extensive experience in setting up efficient systems for finance, compliance and operations.
Prior to this Archna was Head of Finance at RVC, which managed the Reuters Greenhouse Fund which invested over $450m in technology companies, and worked alongside Norman. She has specialist knowledge of the VC industry.
Archna qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG and is a graduate of the London School of Economics with a BSc in Business, Mathematics and Statistics.
Josh is a General Partner at Dawn and leads our Fintech investments. Josh works with portfolio companies iZettle, Divido, Property Partner, Sonovate, Zumper, Obillex and Fanduel.
Before joining Dawn in 2007, he worked with McKinsey & Company, managing teams that advised boards of Fortune global 500 financial institutions based in London, Geneva, Amsterdam and New York. While at McKinsey, Josh was recognised within the firm as a leading financial services expert in Europe. Within his retail and wholesale banking work, Josh devoted significant time to informing clients on the impact of new technologies on their industries, and helping to assess and implement these technologies for their businesses.
In addition to his private sector client work, Josh was also integral to supporting McKinsey’s relationship with the World Economic Forum, leading McKinsey support for the WEF’s financial services knowledge initiatives and activities, principally for the Davos conferences in 2006 and 2007.
Josh was a Graduate Scholar at Oxford University in Mathematics. He was subsequently a Research Fellow at Harvard University in Economics and Game Theory, publishing papers in Game Theory and IT Security journals before studying operational research and advanced financial modelling at Cambridge University, as part of an MPhil in Statistics; his MPhil research was supported by the Rand Institute of Santa Monica, California.