About 600 people attended the event, which honours the most innovative and high performing members of the European venture capital industry and was held at The Natural History Museum.
Heiko Huberts, founder and managing director of Bigpoint, the world’s largest portal for browser games, presented a well-received keynote speech that outlined the future of the gaming industry and detailed the best model for future revenue growth in the market.
The Investor Allstars Awards are known as the ‘Oscars’ of the venture capital community, which congregates to vie for one of the coveted trophies. Organiser Vitesse Media publishers GrowthBusiness and sister magazine Business XL.
Among the winners this year are Huberts, who was named Entrepreneur of the Year, for his work in achieving a hugely successful exit for the investors in Bigpoint, and Niklas Zennström, founding partner of international venture capital firm Atomico, who was awarded VC Personality of the Year.
Other winners include Demeter Partners for Cleantech Investor of the Year, YFM’s British Smaller Companies VCT for Venture Capital Trust of the Year and DFJ Esprit for Venture Capital Fund of the Year.
Manish Madhvani, founding partner of GP Bullhound, acts as chairman of the Judges who decide on a pre-announced shortlist, and winners. Madhvani comments, ‘I’d like to be the first to congratulate all the winners of this year’s Investor Allstars Awards.’
‘There were some amazing achievements against a backdrop of testing economic conditions. For over $10 billion of value to be created by the shortlist of the Exit of the Year category – it is clear that risk taking and value add investment is still very much on the agenda in Europe.’
Vitesse Media chief operating officer Niki Baker comments, ‘Huge congratulations to all this year’s Investor Allstars Awards winners. It was a pleasure to see so many entrepreneurs, their investors, advisers and suppliers all in one place, and at such a fabulous venue.’
Hubertz continues, ‘I would like to express my gratitude to the Investor AllStars Venture Capital Awards for recognising Bigpoint’s achievements with such a prestigious award. We look forward to building on this momentum in 2012 and beyond, as we seek to accelerate our global expansion and provide the optimum mulit-platform online gaming experience to our customers the world over.’
Zennström adds, ‘The journey from entrepreneur to venture capitalist has been a fascinating one, and it’s great to receive this award as Atomico celebrates its fifth birthday.
‘Although the award is for Personality of the Year, I know that it also reflects the outstanding teamwork at our firm, which has produced some very exciting investments. These include well-known ones, such as our investment in Rovio, but also some fascinating, less visible investments that have remarkable potential.’
DFJ Esprit chief executive Simon Cook says receiving the industry accolade marked a point of success for the firm this year, while David Hall, managing director of YFM Equity Partners adds that the award is ‘testimony to the great performance of our business over the past year’.
The full list of winners and nominations is available here.
