Georg Ell
Chief Executive Officer at Phrase
Georg Ell
Chief Executive Officer at Phrase
Surrey, England
Overview
Work Experience
Chief Executive Officer
2022 - Current
I'm thrilled to announce our new, unified, brand as Phrase - and the launch of our new Phrase Localization Suite. Leading a global company offering state-of-the-art #localization software across automation and AI-powered machine translation is an exciting opportunity, and I can't wait to turn our vision into reality. Phrase offers the most highly ranked Translation Management System in our industry together with our highly integratable software localization platform, together in the new Suite. We're growing faster than the competition and with an amazing customer base (Uber, Zendesk, Shopify and Lyst, to name just a handful). The people here are absolutely brilliant - it's an internationally diverse group, with many cultures in the team. Check out our open roles and if you don't see one obviously for you but are still intrigued please get in touch with your LinkedIn profile and a cover letter whatever your background! https://phrase.com/careers/
Non Executive Director - Qoria (Family Zone, Smoothwall, Linewize)
2022
Following my tenure as CEO at Smoothwall, which joined with FamilyZone in August 2021, I now have the privilege to join Tim, Peter and the rest of the Family Zone board in supporting this fantastic company and leadership team as they take the business to new heights. I couldn't be more excited for the opportunities ahead to advance the company mission to protect and support every child's digital journey.
Venture Partner - Craft Ventures
2021
Craft Ventures is a leading Venture Capital firm based in San Francisco, founded by David Sacks and Jeff Fluhr. Craft specialises in the areas in which David and Jeff are recognised as world experts: B2B SaaS (specifically bottoms-up SaaS) and Marketplace investments, and typically invests from Series A onwards. As a Venture Partner I am open to sourcing new investment opportunities and supporting portfolio companies wherever I can.
Venture Partner - Local Globe
2018
Localglobe works with the best entrepreneurs across the UK, Europe and Africa, specialising in Seed and Series A investments across a full range of industries. As a Venture Partner, I try to help portfolio companies wherever I can, and am also excited to meet entrepreneurs and companies seeking investment.
Advisory Board Member
2018
Addressing the under-representation of women in technology. Female Founders / CEOs - please get in touch so I can introduce you to this incredible network! https://accelerateher.co
Chief Executive Officer
2018 - 2022
We're very excited to share that Smoothwall has now joined with Family Zone, which is an ASX-listed technology company, headquartered in Perth, Australia, and an emerging leader in the fast-growing global cyber safety industry. Family Zone’s unique innovation is its patented cyber safety ecosystem, a platform enabling a world-first collaboration between schools, parents and cyber safety educators. The exit for Tenzing generated a 5.6x return: https://tenzing.pe/news/tenzing-exits-smoothwall-generating-a-56x-return/ Family Zone announcement: https://f.hubspotusercontent40.net/hubfs/416543/Smoothwall-Acquisition-and-$146M-Capital-Raising.pdf Smoothwall provides a comprehensive safeguarding suite comprising web-filtering, digital student monitoring, safeguarding/record-keeping and classroom management solutions to empower our customers to protect the most vulnerable in society. As well as ensuring safe access to the internet, we help safeguarders to identify those at risk of mental health issues, bullying, radicalisation, sexualisation, self-harm and even suicide. We're a global business, proudly headquartered in Leeds (UK) with a US office in Charlotte (NC, USA), and a strong sense of mission and exciting plans. In December 2018, Smoothwall was proud to be awarded the Best Companies' Two Star Award for "Outstanding" employee engagement. In November 2019, we were very proud to go one better and be awarded the Three-Star Award "Extraordinary". We were also honoured as the company that had risen the highest number of places in the rankings in the whole of the UK. In May 2021, we were awarded Two Stars again, and for the second year running were listed as a Top 100 Employers for Mid-Size businesses. Working hard to be the most trusted safeguarding provider in the world, starts with our staff, and we’re thrilled for their dedication to be recognised in this way.
Advisory Board Member
2016 - 2020
I'm honoured to sit on Edelman's Advisory Board alongside a phenomenal group of people. The company is multi-disciplinary, visionary and does impactful exciting work across a huge range of disciplines. https://www.edelman.co.uk/about/advisory/
Director, Western Europe
2014 - 2018
Georg served as Director for Western Europe at Tesla Motors, where he led an outstanding team of passionate people focussed on customers, growth, and the company's mission to accelerate the world's movement to sustainable energy. He joined Tesla when the UK had just one store, no service capacity and few people had heard of Tesla. Since 2016 Georg also led the business in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg (thus comprising 'Western Europe' with the UK & Ireland). Collectively his teams comprised c. 330 people across 37 locations. Being passionate about diversity, a particularly proud moment was to publish Gender Pay Gap data for Tesla UK in April 2018 (http://bit.ly/2HV4tlJ) showing both median and mean base pay as higher for women, a sign of how seriously Georg and his leadership team approached the subject of diversity over a consistent period. In 2016, he was listed in the Debrett's 500, "People of Influence" for his work at Tesla. http://bit.ly/1PDBBHU
VP & General Manager EMEA
2013 - 2014
Fuzebox is expanding internationally starting with Europe, Middle East and Africa. We are building out a strong international customer-facing team, based initially in London.
General Manager, EMEA
2011 - 2013
Georg was responsible for all revenue including pre-sales, field, inside & renewals sales teams; and business operations including customer success, recruitment, sales and office operations; and he was a member of the global leadership. Georg joined Yammer in March 2011, as one of three that were “first on the ground” in Europe, subsequently growing the headcount to 85, 10x growth in bookings and establishing a permanent HQ in London. Yammer Europe was awarded the top 3 Star accreditation in the Best Companies scheme in 2013. One of the proudest achievements for our whole team: http://bit.ly/1aA9TKa