Chris McClelland

Founder

2018 - Current

I've created decks and collateral that have helped founders raise over $600M. I've worked in a broad range of sectors from deep tech (BioTech, Energy, AI/ML, Medical Devices, Hardware) to consumer. The majority of the 250+ deals are pre-seed to Series A (up to $50M) and have helped founders navigate over 25,000 investor meetings and close money from angels, and boutique funds up to tier-1 funds across the US, UK and Europe. To help accelerate the fundraising process, I've created a "fundraising sprint" that helps get CEOs out of the engine room and gives them a head start with their investment journey. I care very much about building healthy founder-investor relationships.

Mentor

2021

Mentor across various programmes.

General Partner

2022

Investing in founders based in Ireland at the earliest possible stage.

Entrepreneur In Residence

2022

Workshop Leader

2022

I delivered sessions on how to fund your business, the venture capital market and running efficient fundraising processes.

Managing Director IgniteNI

2019 - 2021

I designed and ran a series of pre-accelerator and accelerator programmes that now form the basis of many accelerators in the UK and Ireland. Community. Grew a global network of mentors and investors which accumulated over 10,000 sessions. Content. Wrote stage/region-appropriate content for the teams on a weekly basis on topics such as Product, Culture, Marketing, and Communication. Fundraising. Personally supported the fundraising efforts of the participants and alumni. Wrote a “fundraising playbook” that has helped founders on the programme raise over £100M. Over 4 years, IgniteNI supported 111 companies and 200 Founders.

Founder and CEO

2013 - 2018

A robot that brews beer. Backed by leading angels and venture capitalists such as Michael Birch, Jeremey Stoppelman, Marc Benioff, Kevin Hartz, Foundary Group and Techstars Ventures. Featured in media across the world including Brazil, US, Australia, Japan, Europe and outlets such as the New York Times, Guardian, Wired, Fast Company, New Scientist, The Independent, Channel4, BuzzFeed, and the Discovery Channel. Hire One of the most successful Kickstarter projects in the UK. Techstars Alumni (Austin) 2014 Opened a craft beer focused brewpub Brewbot Belfast, and a wine bar called the Cru Club. Built a digital distribution of beer that enables brewers to export their beer without shipping a bottle.

Technical Advisor, Non-Executive Director

2011 - 2014

CEO

2009 - 2013

Lead Ecliptic to work on almost 80 mobile applications for startups through to global companies, reaching 11 million users. We shipped the first apps for Mailchimp and eHarmony. We offered a range of services including development, user research, design.

Research Assistant

2006 - 2009

Assisted in developing live electronics and audio/visual materials for a number large scale works. This involved custom programming (C, Objective-C, Java), extensive work with Max/MSP/Jitter & OpenMusic, and the preparation of materials for fixed media.

Lecturer

2005 - 2008

Designed and delivered the courses in computer music at the Sonic Arts Research Centre. Courses include - Live Performance Systems - Computer Programming for Musical Applications (Level 2, BSc) - Sound Synthesis and Signal Processing (Level 2, BSc), Fundamentals of sound, synthesis and processing. - Portfolio (Level 3, BSc) Supervision of Final year projects in Computer Programming - MA supervision