Board

The board brings together a group of industry specialists with the talent, experience and energy to drive The Cloud’s strategic development and future success.

Steve Nicholson - Chief Executive Officer

For over 20 years Steve has successfully directed and led public and private sector businesses across a range of blue chips and venture backed enterprises in fixed and mobile telecommunications, media and the Internet across Europe and Asia.

Steve joined in January 2007 from an international media company, SPG Media PLC, where he was Executive Chairman and latterly Chief Executive. He orchestrated the successful turnaround of the business.

Prior to SPG Media Steve held senior positions at KPN, Hutchison, Philips, Case Communications, Duracell and Mars.

Jonathan Apps - Chief Financial Officer

Jonathan qualified as a chartered accountant with Coopers & Lybrand in 1989 and has spent the majority of his working life in the TMT sectors in the UK, Europe and the Far East, latterly as CFO of various AIM and LSE listed companies.  He has extensive experience of building and running finance functions on a UK, European and Global scale, together with a considerable history of IPO and M&A activity as well as investor relations. Jonathan has been Group CFO at the Cloud since 2007.

Krishna Visvanathan - Partner, Encore Ventures, DFJ Esprit

Krishna has been a Venture Capital investor for over 10 years.  He was previously a Partner in 3i’s Venture Capital team and was responsible for several successful investments including Ezurio Ltd, Ubinetics Ltd, Blue Lithium Inc, E2V plc, Fastnet Systems Ltd and BTN Ltd.

He started his career at Ernst & Young before founding Optika Fibre Technologies, a polymer fibre and display technology start-up based in SE Asia.  He currently sits on the boards of Icera Inc, Netronome Systems Inc, Taptu Ltd, The Cloud Networks Ltd, Light Blue Optics Ltd and Cambridge Semiconductor Ltd.

He has a degree in Management Sciences from the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.

Åsa Sundberg - Director, PVP

Åsa is a General Partner of Provider Venture Partners, a Nordic VC based in Stockholm. Provider invests primarily in media, communication and internet technology and services. Åsa’s main focus is communication related investments.

 

Bjorn Erik Reinseth - Partner, Ferd Venture

Bjorn Erik is a Partner at Ferd Venture, a Norwegian based VC investing in fast growing technology companies. He has extensive operational experience from the telecom sector and focuses on ICT companies.

 

Niall Murphy - Founder & Non-Executive Director

Niall co-founded The Cloud with George Polk in January 2003. Niall served as Executive Director and Chief Strategy Officer until June 2009, when he stepped down from his executive role.

An accomplished technologist and entrepreneur, prior to The Cloud Niall founded and developed a number of successful digital media and internet services businesses in Europe and southern Africa. In 1994 he founded an internet service provider in South Africa in a joint venture with Sprint. In 1996 he co-founded The Digital Thinking Network in Amsterdam. Niall contributed as a policy advisor on telecoms in South Africa in the early 90s through an African National Congress (ANC) think tank.

Martin Gibson - Partner, Accel

Martin has been active in international technology start-ups and venture capital for 18 years and focuses on the communications and semiconductor sectors.

Prior to Accel, Martin was a Partner at Atlas Venture in London where he invested primarily in communications and semiconductor businesses for 9 years. Whilst at Atlas Venture Martin sat on the boards of DisplayLink, Phyworks, Azea Networks (acquired by Xtera), and Zinwave. He also worked closely with Orthogon Systems (acquired by Motorola), Icera Semiconductor, Ubiquisys, Radioscape and Xelerated. Previously, he was a general manager and consultant at Scientific Generics, a business & technology consulting firm, focused on technology-driven commercial products. Earlier in his career, while at start-ups Cellstack and Madge Networks, he was responsible for video and data communications products for enterprise markets. He also worked within ANSI and the ATM Forum defining new communications standards.

Martin has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, a BA in Electrical & Information Science from Cambridge University and qualified as a Chartered Engineer.