Founders Force

Philip Salter founded The Entrepreneurs Network in 2014 with the aim of building an organisation with the aim of helping make Britain the best place in the world to start and grow a business.

Philip was previously Business Features Editor of City A.M. where he wrote a weekly column on entrepreneurship and interviewed many of Britain’s leading entrepreneurs.

He is a frequent speaker at conferences, writes a column for Forbes http://www.forbes.com/sites/philipsalter/ on entrepreneurship and appears regularly elsewhere in the media.

Mr. Thaha is a Senior Lecturer and Consultant Colorectal Surgeon at Queen Mary University of London and Barts Health NHS Trust, with a clinical and research focus on cancer prevention, early diagnosis, and improving outcomes for patients and their families beyond treatment.
His research spans strategies for earlier cancer detection, predicting treatment response, developing novel surgical techniques, and addressing the unmet needs of cancer survivors. Alongside his academic and clinical work, he is an NHS Clinical Entrepreneur and MedTech Venture Builder through the CE-Track programme at LIHE — translating surgical insight into scalable healthcare innovation.
A graduate of Trivandrum Medical College, he brings a rare combination of frontline surgical experience, academic rigour, and entrepreneurial drive to some of oncology's most pressing challenges.

Jiří is a second-time founder and CEO at Logmanager, on a mission to build another globally successful Czech cybersecurity company. His blueprint is Flowmon Networks — a university spin-off he helped grow from zero to a 140-person team with $15M in revenues and customers across 45 countries, before navigating its acquisition by Kemp Technologies and Progress Software.
At Flowmon, Jiří progressed from Technical Director through business development across Europe and Japan, before taking the helm as CEO for the company's final four years.

Prior to his commercial career, he was a researcher and project leader at CESNET, the Czech national research and education network, where he designed FPGA-based solutions for large-scale network monitoring and led participation in multiple European R&D projects — experience that gave him the deep technical foundation in network security, NetFlow/IPFIX, and FPGA technology that underpins his work to this day.

Beyond Logmanager, Jiří mentors founders and sits on startup and scaleup boards at JIC, committed to paying his success forward and helping the next generation of Czech technology companies reach global scale.

Dušan Koutný is the founder and CEO of Biteberry, an AI voice agent platform built to transform how restaurants take orders and manage operations. Drawing on over a decade of food industry experience, he and his team have developed a voice-based ordering solution powered by a tailored conversational AI model — designed to reduce friction, improve accuracy, and meaningfully boost restaurant profitability.

Biteberry sits at the intersection of two fast-moving trends: the automation of hospitality operations and the mainstream adoption of voice AI. Dušan's deep domain knowledge in the food and restaurant sector gives Biteberry a practical edge — built not just by technologists, but by people who understand the operational realities of running a restaurant.

Michal is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has built and scaled businesses across four continents, spanning electronics, pet food, food supplements, garden retail, and solar energy. His most significant venture is Solarity, a leading PV distributor he leads as CEO, with operations across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America — generating over €100M in turnover with a 100+ person team. The company's mission is to become a truly global PV solution provider across distribution, EPC, and clean energy investment.

Beyond Solarity, Michal actively invests in startups, VC funds, and property development, bringing the hands-on perspective of someone who has built businesses from zero across wildly different industries and geographies. His edge is operational range — he has managed supply chains, built teams, and navigated market complexity across some of the world's most challenging and high-growth regions.

Raj Valley is a seasoned operator who specialises in turning complexity into clarity — whether rescuing a struggling business, scaling a fast-growing one, or helping founders build the structure to grow. Currently COO at Textra, an AI-driven video content platform trusted by Amazon, Cisco, and HSBC, he oversees GTM strategy, product development, and customer success, building the operational backbone for rapid innovation and global scale.
His track record spans CEO and COO roles across PropTech, AI, SaaS, and Digital Media. At VistaBee he led a full business reset in six months; at Movebubble he secured £500K, grew MRR by 25%, and lifted renter enquiries by 250%; and at Splash News he helped scale a global agency to over $100M in revenue before its acquisition by Corbis. His approach is simple: great people, clear systems, and honest leadership — with AI at the centre of what comes next.

Alessandro Petrich is a Rome-based operator and investor with a decade of experience spanning venture capital, corporate finance, and hands-on startup leadership across Italy's deep tech ecosystem. Currently serving as CFO at Northern Light Composites (NLComp), he is helping scale an Italian startup tackling one of materials science's most pressing challenges — the end-of-life recyclability of fiberglass and composite materials.

Before NLComp, Alessandro led New Business Strategy and Development at Tate, an energy transition startup, and served as Investment Manager at Eneatech, a €500M+ tech transfer fund focused on Healthcare and Life Sciences. His earlier career took him through some of Italy's most respected early-stage institutions — Italian Angels for Growth, P101 Ventures, LVenture Group, and PwC — giving him a rare combination of investor-side pattern recognition and founder-side execution experience.

Alessandro brings a cross-sector perspective that connects frontier technology with commercial growth, having worked across composites, energy, healthcare, and open innovation. A well-travelled connector with presence across the European startup scene, he is actively engaged with founders, co-investors, and partners pushing the boundaries of deep tech in Southern Europe and beyond.

Mikael Ahlstedt is an innovation and corporate venture professional specializing in Startup Scouting and Strategic Partnerships at Nexperia. Based in Munich, Germany, he serves as a vital bridge between global semiconductor development and the early-stage deep-tech hardware ecosystem. In his role, Mikael identifies breakthrough technologies, evaluates industrial scalability, and builds lasting collaborative networks with visionary founders, researchers, and institutional investors to accelerate open innovation.

With deep roots in the European tech scene, Mikael frequently represents Nexperia at premier global summits like SLUSH and Techarena to advocate for sustainable hardware solutions. His work focus includes driving high-impact initiatives in energy harvesting, microcontrollers, and IoT sensor applications alongside pioneering startup partners. An alumnus of Saarland University, he combines technical insight with strategic venture development to help shape the future of the semiconductor industry.

Claudiu Hidas is the founder and CEO of Munevo, an impact-driven medtech startup that empowers people with disabilities to control wheelchairs and devices using smart glasses. Founded during his university years, Munevo has since gained international traction across Europe, the US, and Japan.

A Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur and Global Shaper of the World Economic Forum, Claudiu has extensive experience in bringing medtech innovations from prototype to patients — navigating hardware, software, regulatory frameworks, and multiple funding instruments including grants, VC, and venture debt.

Claudiu mentors mission-driven startups in medtech and impact tech, especially on topics such as market entry, certification, and strategic fundraising. For founders pushing physical and societal boundaries, his journey offers both inspiration and practical wisdom.

Damian began building software for cargo logistics at age 14 and quickly transitioned into the digital agency space as a partner at Inspiro Solutions, which was later acquired. In 2011 he co-founded Brand Embassy with Vit Horký, leading product development and engineering as CTO to turn the company into a global omnichannel customer-care platform serving major telecommunications, banking and e-commerce clients across 30+ countries.

In May 2019 Brand Embassy was acquired by NICE, a major international player in customer-experience software, and Damian remained on board in a senior product/R&D leadership role. He has demonstrated a rare mix of deep technical insight and strategic business acumen, helping to scale a Czech-born startup into a globally integrated solution under a public company.

Beyond his entrepreneurial achievements, Damian is recognized in the Czech entrepreneurial ecosystem (he was featured in Forbes “30 under 30” in the Czech Republic).