Team
David Arndt
David is responsible for sourcing, due diligence, and execution of Dawn’s B2B software and fintech investments across Europe, with a focus on DACH.
David joined Dawn Capital from McKinsey, where he advised internet and tech clients on enterprise software markets and automation technologies. Prior to that, David gained investment experience at Dynamo Capital, a London-based hedge fund, where he covered cloud companies. He also spent time with Goldman Sachs in their equity derivatives team.
David holds degrees in both physics and mathematics and graduated with distinction from the University of Vienna and the London School of Economics. David is fluent in German and English.
Shamillah Bankiya
Shamillah is a Vice President at Dawn, and responsible for sourcing, due diligence, and portfolio management, with a focus on software and UK opportunities.
Prior to joining Dawn, Shamillah was an investor at Softbank Vision Fund in London, a leading global growth equity investor with >$100b AUM. At Softbank, Shamillah was involved in multiple investments across software and healthcare businesses, leading due diligence and developing critical sector investment theses. She also managed two portfolio companies. It is while at Softbank that Shamillah became passionate about B2B software, consequently founding a labour-matching business in the space.
Before Softbank, Shamillah was a management consultant at Bain & Company, working in their London, New York and Dubai offices. Her primary sector focus was in TMT & Industrial Goods, where she supported Private Equity Firms in their diligence of technology assets and Corporations with their strategy and operations.
Shamillah studied Economics & African Studies at Yale University, graduating with Honours. She was born in Uganda, has lived on four continents, and speaks conversational French as well as multiple Ugandan languages.
Shamillah also founded and runs a labour-matching business in the B2B software space, and most recently was listed on Forbes 30 under 30 for Finance in 2021.
Josh Bell
Josh is a General Partner at Dawn and leads our Fintech investments. In nearly 20 years working exclusively in financial services, Josh has built enduring relationships with founders and has strong working relationships with key senior fintech executives across Europe and the US.
Josh led Dawn’s investment in iZettle, the largest ever fintech M&A exit in Europe. He currently sits on the boards of Divido, OpenGamma, Soldo and Tink.
Internally, Josh heads up Dawn’s people function leading recruitment, regular assessment and development of all employees.
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 a Vice President at Dawn and works on sourcing, due diligence and portfolio work with a particular interest in financial technology and the Nordics. Since joining Dawn, he has been closely involved in Dawn's investments into Harbr, Tink, Eigen Technologies, Element, OpenGamma and Divido.
Dan joined Dawn from J.P. Morgan in London where he advised financial services businesses across Europe on M&A and institutional capital raising. With fintech both disrupting and forging innovation in banking, payments and insurance, he worked both with incumbents and burgeoning challengers as they positioned themselves for a tech-led future. He brings this experience to Dawn's current fintech portfolio with an understanding of both the opportunities and challenges for software businesses operating in the sector.
Dan read History at Oxford University where he graduated with First Class Honours and won prizes for outstanding performances in his final exams and dissertation. He continued at Oxford going on to earn an MSt with Distinction in Modern History.
Laurens de Poorter
Laurens is responsible for sourcing, due diligence and portfolio management at Dawn, with a particular focus on software and fintech companies across Benelux and France.
He joined Dawn after completing his MBA at Harvard Business School. During his MBA, Laurens spent time as a strategist for X, the moonshot factory (formerly Google[x]), working on their plan to bring the internet to underserved regions through “laser beams”, and as a growth equity investor for Global Founders Capital.
Prior to his MBA, Laurens spent four years as a management consultant for the Boston Consulting Group working in their Brussels office. He worked on strategic initiatives for executives across industries and eight European countries, with a primary focus on the TMT sector.
Laurens has a true passion for social entrepreneurship. He founded Academics for Development to connect university students with entrepreneurs across the globe to start or grow social businesses. He scaled the non-profit network internationally and personally worked on projects in Peru, Uganda and Senegal. When COVID-19 hit, Laurens co-founded BloomUp, a mental health start-up that aims to make online therapy more affordable and accessible.
Laurens is fluent in Dutch and conversational in French. He is an avid skier and kitesurfer. Besides an MBA from Harvard Business School, Laurens also holds a Master’s degree in Energy Engineering from KU Leuven and has spent one year at Imperial College.
Alix Fawcett
Alix joins Dawn as a Marketing Associate. She will help deliver marketing communications and activities to support Dawn’s brand development, investment origination, and relationship-building with founders, investors, and Dawn’s wider network.
Alix joins Dawn from Founders Forum (FF), a community for entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors and thought leaders. Since starting there in 2018, she was part of the community team, where she led various brand activations from overseeing the development of the FF app, to content curation and engaging the network across events and beyond. Most recently, she managed FF’s Investor Partnerships.
Alix has a varied international background having lived and studied in several countries, including South Africa and Singapore. She studied at Hotelschool, The Hague where she graduated with a BA in Hospitality Management.
Norman Fiore
Norman is Co-founder of Dawn and leads the firm’s investments in B2B software. He has spent over 20 years as a venture capitalist in Europe, investing primarily in B2B software, and 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.
Elaine Goh
Elaine is a Senior Fund Accountant at Dawn and is responsible for all the accounting and reporting matters of the funds.
Before joining Dawn, Elaine was a Portfolio and Analysis Manager at a private equity firm, AlpInvest Partners where she was responsible for the reporting to Investors and accounting of the funds. Prior to AlpInvest, she worked in the Central Finance Team as well as the Macquarie Securities Team at Macquarie Bank. Elaine qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2010.
Elaine holds a BSc Mathematics degree from Imperial College, University of London. She speaks fluent Cantonese.
Sophie Green
Sophie is a Marketing Associate, focussing on Dawn's brand, social media and events. She also assists in investor relations and PR work.
Prior to this role, Sophie was an Administrative Associate at Dawn, and was responsible for the administrative support of the Investment team, special events and day-to-day running of our office in Soho Square.
Before joining Dawn, Sophie worked in events at The British Museum where she helped to run the Membership programme and hosted events such as tours, late-night openings and sleepovers.
Sophie holds a Classical Civilisation degree from the University of Warwick.
Hannah Gubbins
Hannah is Director of Investor Relations and Marketing at Dawn and supports the firm’s investor relations and oversees the firm’s marketing and communications strategy.
Before joining Dawn, Hannah spent three and a half years at Inflexion Private Equity, where she was responsible for marketing, communications, and investor support.
Previously Hannah was an Associate at BNY Mellon and rotated across the firm’s asset management and client management divisions.
She graduated from Durham University with a BSc in Geography.
Samantha Hancock
Samantha is Business Manager and responsible for Human Resources and Office Management at Dawn. Samantha is also an Executive Assistant to the Partners.
Before joining Dawn, Samantha worked as an Office Manager and Executive Assistant for an American owned private equity real estate firm.
Julie Kainz
Julie is a Vice President at Dawn and responsible for sourcing, due diligence and portfolio management.
Prior to joining Dawn, Julie was an investor at Salesforce Ventures, the strategic venture capital arm of Salesforce [CRM]. During her time at Salesforce Ventures, Julie developed a deep understanding of enterprise software investing from Series A to pre-IPO, and was involved in the company's investments into Algolia, Akeneo, Contentful, Gong, Privitar, Qatalog, Salto.io, Techsee and Whitehat.
Before Salesforce, Julie joined Founders Factory as one of its first employees on the investment team in London, where she was responsible for building out the sourcing strategy and engaging early stage companies into a program with L'Oreal, easyJet, the Guardian, CSC, Holtzbrinck and Aviva.
Julie holds a CEMS Master in International Management (MIM) passed with honors from WU Vienna and Rotterdam School of Management, a double degree program jointly run by the top universities across Europe and APAC. She also spent a semester studying in New Zealand, where she was able to follow her passion for skiing, surfing and hiking.
Raxita Kapashi
Raxita is the Chief Financial Officer at Dawn and manages all the finance and operations for Dawn.
Before joining Dawn, Raxita was a CFO of a Fintech group called TruFin plc. Raxita was instrumental in taking the group to IPO on AIM raising £70m of proceeds. Prior to TruFin, Raxita has held senior finance roles at Inflexion Private Equity and, before that, Oakley Capital Private Equity.
At Inflexion, where she grew the finance and operations teams, Raxita was responsible for fund structuring, compliance, legal, tax, as well as all the reporting. At Oakley, she was not only responsible for the private equity fund but she also worked closely with Peter Dubens on his personal interests. Raxita has built up a considerable amount of commercial experience, in addition to financing expertise.
Raxita qualified as a chartered accountant with BDO and has a Civil Engineering degree from Cardiff University.
Avalon Lee-Bacon
As Head of Talent, Avalon will be responsible for building out Dawn’s talent platform and supporting portfolio companies with senior hires, sharing best practices, and developing top talent. Avalon will also focus on nurturing and leveraging Dawn’s valued network of founders, business leaders, and advisers on behalf of its portfolio companies.
Prior to Dawn, Avalon was a member of the Technology Sector at executive search and leadership advisory firm Russell Reynolds Associates, based out of London. Since joining them in 2016, Avalon focussed on enterprise software and fintech, with a particularly strong track record across CEO, CRO, COO, CMO, CPO, and CTO searches.
Avalon began her career at a leading cultural communications agency, executing PR campaigns primarily for museums and galleries.
Avalon graduated with a BA and MPhil from Trinity College, Cambridge, where she studied History of Art.
Steven Lister
Steven is a Corporate Accountant at Dawn and also assists with compliance and fund finance.
Before joining Dawn, Steven was a management accountant at a private equity firm, AnaCap Financial Partners. Prior to AnaCap, Steven worked in audit at PKF where he qualified as a chartered certified accountant.
Steven holds a Chemistry degree from the University of Manchester.
Henry Mason
Henry began his career in technology consulting for enterprise and government clients, before moving to an investing role at Dawn four years ago. At Dawn, Henry is a Principal and focuses on B2B software and FinTech throughout Europe, with a particular leaning towards data and security. Among recent investments, he is closely involved with: Harbr (data exchange platform, $38.5m Series A), Garrison (secure remote browsing, $30m Series B), Quantexa (data analytics, $20m Series B) and Onna (knowledge integration, $11m Series A).
Internally, Henry leads on data-driven deal sourcing and is the product owner for Dawn’s proprietary sourcing engine, Vortex. Additionally, Henry is a subject expert on cybersecurity and the data lifecycle.
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.
Mina Mutafchieva
Mina Mutafchieva
Principal
Involved in
Eigen Technologies
Showpad
Templafy
Access Fintech
LeanIX
CluedInGet in touch
Mina leads deal execution and portfolio work across B2B technology and fintech, with a passion for financial technology.
At Dawn, Mina manages VC and entrepreneur relationships in the Nordic markets, and leads fintech and future of work deals across Europe. She is also the firm’s subject expert on insurtech, regtech and enterprise account-based sales. Mina led the investments in Eigen, Cleanshelf and Access Fintech, where she sits on the boards. She is a board observer for Showpad and Templafy.
Mina brings 10 years of experience from Strategy Consulting and growth Private Equity, having lived and worked in Poland, Belgium, and the UK. Before joining Dawn, she spent four years at a leading growth Private Equity fund in London, where she focused on tech-enabled services, financial services, and specialty consumer investments across Europe. In addition to executing multiple deals, Mina sat on a number of Boards and was particularly focused on driving product innovation, professionalisation of sales, and international expansion at her portfolio companies.
She started her career at McKinsey & Company, where she led numerous projects on strategy and commercial excellence for leading global financial institutions in Zurich, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, and London. She also spent time working at the McKinsey Global Institute, leading the work behind some of its most influential publications on global debt levels and routes to deleveraging.
Mina holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a First Class degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
Haakon Overli
Haakon is Co-founder of Dawn and works across its entire portfolio, leading the targeted stake-building programme in the firm’s most promising businesses. Starting with Mimecast in Dawn I, through to the most recent Dawn IV fund, Haakon catalyses these (often off-market) investment opportunities, which Dawn believes delivers enhanced returns for its funds and investors. Haakon also sits on the boards of Dataiku, Templafy and Minute Media.
Internally, Haakon oversees Dawn’s growth stage investing, and fundraising and investor relations efforts.
Haakon has been an entrepreneur his entire career, building invariably successful financial services organisations. Before co-founding Dawn, he was UK CEO and founder of Self Trade, an online stock broker which floated in 2000 with a market capitalisation of €750m, and was acquired later that year by HypoVereinsbank for €911m. Nearer the beginning of his career, Haakon joined an investment banking startup which was ultimately bought by ING Barings, where he became a director and co-head of technology investment banking.
Haakon studied Mathematics at the University of Oslo and holds a BA (Hons) in Economics from Durham University.
Evgenia Plotnikova
Evgenia is a Partner at Dawn, and manages investor, VC and entrepreneur relationships in the French-speaking markets, and leads SaaS deals across Europe. She is the firm’s subject expert on the customer success function. Since joining Dawn, Evgenia led investments into Harbr ($38.5m Series A), Bryter ($16m Series A), Soldo ($61m Series B), Dataiku ($101m Series C), ZIVVER ($12m Series A) and ReachFive ($10m Series A).
Evgenia has spent multiple years in venture and private equity. Prior to joining Dawn, she was a VC at Atomico, where she spearheaded the firm's entry into France and worked with a number of pan-European and global businesses, including the likes of Ontruck and Memphis Meats. Before joining the world of VC, Evgenia was an investor at TPG Capital, a San Francisco headquartered private equity fund with over $70Bn AUM, where she executed numerous deals in telecommunications, retail, transportation and mining. She started her career at J.P. Morgan in London and Dubai offices, where she advised businesses on potential M&A transactions as well as equity and debt financings.
Evgenia holds a Masters degree in Finance from SciencesPo Paris and studied at the Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania). This is where she really caught the startup bug: while at SciencesPo, she worked at JCSP, the university’s leading consulting organisation supporting entrepreneurs in their operational projects and go-to-market.
A Forbes 30 Under 30 winner, then its finance category judge, Evgenia is a TechStars mentor and, most recently, one of Business Insider’s 100 Coolest People in Tech.
Evgenia is fluent in French and Russian, has lived in 5 countries and travelled to 55 (and counting).
Virginia Pozzato
Virginia is responsible for the sourcing, due diligence, and execution of Dawn's fintech and B2B software investments, honing in on the UK, France, and Nordics markets.
Prior to joining Dawn, Virginia was at J.P. Morgan in London, where she focussed on M&A and debt capital markets across various sectors in Europe.
Virginia holds an Economics and Finance degree from Bocconi University in Milan and is fluent in Italian.
Daniela Raffel
Daniela works on sourcing, due diligence, and execution of Dawn’s fintech and B2B software investments in the UK, DACH, and Iberian markets.
Daniela joined Dawn Capital from Capital on Tap, a London-based SME-lending fintech, where she was a Growth Manager focussed on automating customer onboarding, product and partnership development, and operational improvements. Prior to that, Daniela was at McKinsey for two years where she advised retail banking clients on how to adopt and leverage new technologies and ways of working.
Daniela holds an Economics degree from Princeton University where she graduated with honours. Daniela speaks fluent Spanish and German.
Sheena Shah
Sheena is an Administrative Associate at Dawn and is responsible for supporting the Investment team. She also manages special events.
Before joining Dawn, Sheena worked as an Executive Assistant at Moelis & Company, the investment bank, and previously worked in the administrative department at EQT Partners.
Alix joins Dawn as a Marketing Associate. She will help deliver marketing communications and activities to support Dawn’s brand development, investment origination, and relationship-building with founders, investors, and Dawn’s wider network.
Alix joins Dawn from Founders Forum (FF), a community for entrepreneurs, CEOs, investors and thought leaders. Since starting there in 2018, she was part of the community team, where she led various brand activations from overseeing the development of the FF app, to content curation and engaging the network across events and beyond. Most recently, she managed FF’s Investor Partnerships.
Alix has a varied international background having lived and studied in several countries, including South Africa and Singapore. She studied at Hotelschool, The Hague where she graduated with a BA in Hospitality Management.