Our people

David founded Longwall with Matthew and Michael. They raised their first fund, OTECF, in 2008.

David started his career as a graduate engineer in Carnaud Metalbox (now Crown Cork), working in a range of roles from R&D to production and project management.

David spent much of his career living and working overseas in Spain, Argentina, Belgium and France. David did his MBA at Harvard Business School, after which he joined Z Corporation, an MIT licensee start up. He spent several years growing the European and Asian businesses before entering the venture industry.

David predominantly focuses on physical science and engineering opportunities.

Matthew founded Longwall with David and Michael. They raised their first fund, OTECF, in 2008.

Matthew has a D.Phil in Biochemistry from the University of Oxford.

Matthew’s pre-venture experience ranges from working in clinical pathology to virology with Zeneca and drug development with Neures. He began venture investing in 1999 and has worked with several investee companies either as an interim manager or board director.

Matthew predominantly focuses on life science opportunities.

Jane is a Chartered Accountant who trained with PricewaterhouseCoopers in their Bristol office before leaving in 2000 to join the group finance team at Future plc, a listed media company.

Jane joined Longwall in 2012 as CFO, having worked in early stage venture capital since 2006. Jane’s focus is on finance and operations within Longwall whilst also providing support to the Longwall portfolio around financial reporting, forecasting and fundraising.

Rebecca began venture investing in 2006 while at Oxford Capital, where she took responsibility for the Oxford Gateway Funds’ investments into healthcare and life science companies, and went on to become Director, Healthcare Ventures at Imperial Innovations (now Touchstone Innovations).

Her earlier career was as a marketing consultant to pharmaceutical and life science technology companies. Rebecca has a PhD in Genetics from Nottingham University and an MBA from Oxford University.

She joined Longwall Ventures in 2017 after a couple of years sabbatical break spent exploring South America in a VW camper van and focuses predominantly on medical technology opportunities.

Helen is a Chartered Accountant who trained with Solomon Hare (now part of Smith & Williamson).

From there she joined Future plc, a listed media company, where she spent 13 years in a variety of group roles working on financial reporting, acquisitions and disposals, corporate re-organisations, share schemes and corporation tax.

Helen joined Longwall Ventures as Financial Controller focusing on all aspects of financial and regulatory reporting.

Michael founded Longwall with David and Matthew. They raised their first fund, OTECF, in 2008.

With a D.Phil in Mathematics from the University of Oxford, Michael had a 16 year career with Morgan Stanley as an investment banker and went on to be a successful angel investor investing in early stage technology businesses. This included NaturalMotion (of which he was Chair), an Oxford-based mobile games start up sold to Zynga for $527m.

At Longwall Michael predominantly focussed on applications of physical sciences and mathematics in areas such as security, media and business software.

Michael retired from Longwall in 2023.