Fidelity raises headcount with London appointment

Fidelity Ventures, an early-stage technology venture capital firm, has hired Karen Slatford as a venture partner in its London office.  The appointment brings Fidelity’s professional headcount to 17.

Slatford: took on interim roles before joining Fidelity

Slatford is a former vice president and general manager in charge of business-to-business sales and marketing for Hewlett-Packard, an information technology company. Before joining Fidelity she worked in a number of interim chief executive officer roles in venture-backed businesses in the software industry, including StepStone, an online recruiting business; Hal Knowledge Solutions, an Italian provider of software for the maintenance and management of multiple software applications, and Portwise, a security software provider.

Slatford spent 18 years at Hewlett-Packard in a variety of roles, including vice president and general manager of worldwide sales and marketing for the business customer organisation.

In September Fidelity added Baruk Pilo to its London office as a venture partner.  Pilo joined from Cisco System’s European corporate mergers and acquisitions group.

Fidelity Ventures’ active European portfolio companies include: BridgeCo, a silicon and software technologies builder; Unipier, a software products supplier; Qumas, a compliance management company; Neverfail, a disaster recovery software provider, and Curam Software, a software provider to the health, social security and military sectors.

Fidelity Ventures manages more than $800 million from offices in Boston and London. Sister fund Fidelity Asia Ventures manages more than $220 million from Shanghai and Hong Kong.