Ian Hogarth
Chair at UK AI Safety Institute
London, England
Overview
Work Experience
Partner
2021 - Current
Plural is an early-stage investment fund that backs the most ambitious founders on a mission to change the world through technology. Our aim is to have GDP-level impact on Europe, address systemic risks and reduce the opportunity gap worldwide through the companies we back.
Chair
2023
I was appointed in June 2023 reporting directly to the Prime Minister and Technology Secretary. The AI Safety Institute is the first state-backed organisation focused on advanced AI safety for the public interest. Its mission is to minimise surprise to the UK and humanity from rapid and unexpected advances in AI. It will work towards this by developing the sociotechnical infrastructure needed to understand the risks of advanced AI and enable its governance. This is a part-time and unpaid role.
Angel investor
2013 - 2021
investor in 100+ start-ups including: Academia.edu, Anthropic, Avidbots, Chorus.ai, Cleo, ComplyAdvantage, Cuvva, Disperse, Faculty, Helsing, Hopin, Incident.io, Kheiron Medical, LabGenius, Nested, Omnipresent, PostEra, Rossum, Second Nature, Tide Banking.
Chairman
2015 - 2017
http://soundboy.tumblr.com/post/136337729790/new-year-new-roles
Co CEO
2015 - 2015
http://blog.songkick.com/2015/06/04/songkick-crowdsurge/ Crash course in M&A! Very interesting and challenging to take two fast growing start-ups and combine their strategies, cultures, products, orgs. Really rewarding to see it all come together and speed up. http://blog.songkick.com/2015/12/17/songkick-triples-sales-in-europe-post-merger-raises-another-10m/
CEO
2007 - 2015
Co-founded Songkick when I was 25 with the two smartest and highest integrity people I knew (Michelle You & Pete Smith) & was CEO for next 8+ years. We hired & retained an incredible team who: - built the most comprehensive database of concerts in the entire world - developed the top rated Songkick web & mobile apps, used by music fans to discover concerts and buy tickets - unlocked various organic growth channels that scaled those apps to over 10 million monthly uniques - closed distribution deals with Spotify, MTV, Pitchfork, YouTube, SoundCloud etc - got us covered by NYT, FT, LA Times, WSJ, TechCrunch, CNBC, Billboard, Recode etc - grew ticket sales to over $100m, selling tickets for one in every 3 shows in London - tried some crazy experiments that were too early for their time, but I still believe...like Detour: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/arts/music/want-andrew-bird-in-your-town-try-crowdfunding.html?_r=0 - raised capital from world class investors including Y Combinator, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital (first ever London investment), Access Industries I’m proudest of the team & culture we built during this period and expect many people from that team to go on to start enduring companies of their own.
Songkick is a ticketing vendor and online database of concerts for music enthusiasts.
Raised $60,815,000.00 from Access Industries and Mark Gillespie.
Associate Consultant
2006 - 2007
Mostly working with tech companies. Based in Asia and Silicon Valley.
Software Engineer (Technology Scholar)
2000 - 2005
Writing software. Sponsored through university as part of the Technology Scholarship scheme.
Cambridge Consultants provides product development consultancy services to well-established companies and start-ups.
Raised $9,230,311.00 from Barclays Investment Bank.