London and New York-based venture capital investor Octopus Ventures has appointed ecommerce entrepreneur and former management consultant Zihao Xu as an associate in the firm’s investment team.
The team is best known for backing the likes of Secret Escapes, eve Sleep, SwiftKey and Zoopla Property Group.
Xu joins Octopus Ventures from Roland Berger Strategy Consultants with six years of consultancy experience spanning across the aerospace, defence, automotive, industrials and private equity sectors.
Xu is founder of a sunglasses and lifestyle brand, Canopy Sunglasses. Founded in 2014, he has responsibility for every aspect of the business including strategy, sourcing, branding and web development. Canopy Sunglasses has so far sold into 14 countries across Europe, Asia, North America and Oceania, predominantly through online retail and re-sellers.
Alex Macpherson, Octopus Ventures, says: “We seek unusually talented entrepreneurs intent on building big businesses that can transform the industries they operate in. Zihao’s experience in having run a business himself as well as assessing markets and delivering top line strategic advice to global businesses makes him a great addition to the team.”
Xu says: “There’s a huge amount of entrepreneurial talent coming out of the UK and Europe. I’m super excited to be joining Octopus in helping to support and serve this community. Coming from a background in advising large corporates, I’m looking forward to getting stuck in at the other end of the spectrum. Given the track record of Octopus Ventures, particularly the year they have had so far in 2016, in my opinion there is no better place to work with unusually talented entrepreneurs.”
Octopus recently raised an additional GBP100 million to invest into early stage European businesses.
