Mentors

James is Twilio’s Director of European Marketing, and brings over 20 years experience of working at the intersection of telecommunications and the web; covering marketing, product development, product management and sales.

Jon is the Managing Director of Techstars and co-founder of f6s.com He loves to help startups and their founders achieve their true potential. Over the last 2 years, Jon has helped to start 12 multi-company accelerators from Montreal to Moscow. Since launching Europe’s first accelerator in 2009 – The Difference Engine – he helped to launch Springboard which was acquired by Techstars

Emma founded Germinate Consultancy in 2011 to offer strategic and business development for creative and digital agencies, arts organisations and charities. Clients include the BFI, Creative England and Places £3 million cultural change programme. In 2013 she established and ran the the Dotforge accelerator. As Programme Director, Emma overseas the programme.

River co-founded Hive, a distraction free collaboration tool designed for startups. He previously worked with the National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs advising educational institutions on how to create startup communities on their campus. As Programme Manager, River structures the dotforge curriculum whilst keeping it responsive to the needs of the cohort.

Sina is a PhD student at the University of Sheffield and Dotforge's CTO-in-Residence. He began running his own web solutions company at the age of 10, has consulted large multinationals, developed and lead projects ranging from intranet based solutions to large social networks, won every single hackathon he's attended and now will be advising the Dotforge startups on their technology strategies.