Seedrs bolsters management team with two new hires

• Jeff Kelisky, who led the growth of pioneering online mapping business, Multimap, and sold it to Microsoft, joins as Chief Operating Officer to lead the ambitious fintech company’s operations.
• Seasoned technologist Ricardo Br√≠zido, the former Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of Rocket Internet’s Jovago and online beauty pioneer LIB Group, joins as CTO to innovate and scale the Seedrs platform.

London, Tuesday 14 March, 2017: Seedrs, the leading equity crowdfunding platform, announced today that it has made two major additions to its management team, appointing Jeff Kelisky as Chief Operating Officer and Ricardo Brízido as Chief Technology Officer.

Jeff Kelisky is a highly-experienced technology executive with a track record in building, leading and scaling successful businesses. He will oversee day-to-day operations in the newly created role at Seedrs, with the heads of product development, technology, legal and marketing and business development all reporting into him. He will be based in the company’s London headquarters.

Kelisky joins Seedrs from Picsolve, a Fidelity-backed $75 million image capture business in the entertainment space. As CEO, he delivered the company’s transformation from an analogue to a digital business and by the time he left in 2016, it led the industry as digital thought leader in image capture and in retail execution.

In his earlier career, Kelisky was CEO of Multimap, Europe’s leading provider of online mapping services, where Jeff led the business for five years before selling it to Microsoft in 2007. He joined Microsoft with the sale, serving as General Manager of the Bing Local Search and Mapping portfolio worldwide, a $150 million+ business portfolio of consumer and enterprise assets.

Jeff Kelisky said:

“I am incredibly thrilled to join this exceptionally intelligent, passionate, and capable team to help drive Seedrs to the next level in serving entrepreneurs and investors. Seedrs is without doubt one of the world’s most sophisticated and innovative early-stage investment platforms, and I am joining at an exciting point where Seedrs is gathering real momentum having recently hit £200 million invested across 470 deals, and serving investors across 65 countries. I’m looking forward to working with the team here and our stakeholders at large to unlock the huge opportunities in growing this asset class through product and service innovation to investors and businesses”

Kelisky will report to Jeff Lynn, CEO and Co-Founder of Seedrs. Lynn created the new COO role in advance of a major ramp-up of Seedrs activity this year, as it seeks to hit aggressive growth targets and plans to announce a number of major initiatives over the year ahead.

Ricardo Brízido, who joins as CTO, is an experienced and pragmatic technology leader with a vast experience in the tech startup space. He has worked in markets spanning five continents and over 40 countries. Before joining Seedrs, Ricardo was CTO of online beauty pioneer LIB Group, and prior to that he drove the launch of the largest hotel online booking platform in Africa, Jumia Travel (formerly Jovago), a Rocket Internet company. At Jovago he led a technical team of 50 people and supported establishing Jovago as the No. 1 in many of the 35+ countries Jovago operated.

As CTO, Ricardo will lead all aspects of Seedrs’s technology strategy and operations. He will be based in London and will oversee an engineering team that is based in both London and Lisbon.

Ricardo Br√≠zido said: “Seedrs has built an outstanding technological product, and the engineering team is made up of a group of outstanding developers. I am looking forward to building on this foundation to help the company scale its technology in line with its ambitious commercial goals, and to continue to deliver for entrepreneurs and investors a world-class online experience.

Commenting on both of the new hires, Jeff Lynn, CEO and Co-Founder of Seedrs said: “I am beyond delighted to welcome Jeff Kelisky and Ricardo Br√≠zido to the Seedrs management team. We hired both after long and exceptionally competitive recruitment processes, and I believe each is world-class at what he does. I am very much looking forward to working with Jeff as a partner in running the Seedrs business, and I know that with our technology in Ricardo’s hands we will remain one of the most innovative fintech companies in Europe.

“Jeff and Ricardo between them bring decades of experience in bringing the very best out of successful technology enterprises and we are incredibly excited to see the impact both positions will have on Seedrs.”