Damien C. Tanner is an English entrepreneur and investor at Innovation Nest. Tanner is known for co-founding several successful companies that have since been acquired and for his investments in early stage B2B SaaS companies across Europe. As angel investor, Tanner is mainly interested in early stage companies that fall into the categories of deep science or planet tech. 

As co-founder of several companies, Damien C. Tanner is an experienced entrepreneur. In 2013 he co-founded MediaCore, an open source platform offered as SaaS. Two years later the company was successfully acquired by Workday. Tanner then co-founded a digital product studio called New Bamboo in 2006, which was acquired by thoughtbot. In 2010 he co-founded Pusher, a real-time communications platform. As in 2018 Tanner continues to serve as board member of the company alongside co-founder Max Williams who is CEO. In 2016 the entrepreneur co-founded Union Motion, an electronic vehicle company. In 2017 he took on the role of venture partner at Innovation Nest, a seed stage venture capital firm offering financial backing for B2B SaaS startups throughout Europe. Tanner is also a board member of Attractions.io, FINCA International and a digital signage company called ScreenCloud.

Location

Born and raised in the United Kingdom, Damien C. Tanner has spent most of his working career in his country of birth. However, Tanner has not limited his investment portfolio to the United Kingdom. He has made a range of investments locally and abroad in the United States where he has focused on synthetic biology, biotechnology, aerospace, robotics and machine learning. 

Remarkable Investments

Some of Damien C. Tanner’s most remarkable investments include:

• Cytera CellWorks, a United States and United Kingdom-based biotechnology company. Cytera builds machines that automate the growing of human cells for biotech companies. 
• Transcriptic, a robotic cloud laboratory in the biotechnology industry located in the United States.
• Vayu, an aerospace, drones and robotics company located in the United States. The VTOL drone was created with the goal of doing rapid medical and humanitarian cargo deliveries.
• Solar for Schools, a company with the goal of helping schools to install solar panels.
• Planet Labs, satellite-based earth imaging and analytics company.
• ET Index, a United Kingdom-based financial technology company with the goal of helping investors reduce carbon risk.
• HackScience, a B2B SaaS company that offers affordable automation for laboratories and is based in the United Kingdom.
• Mattermark, a United States-based B2B company that uses machine learning and big data analytics to organise business information for clients around the world.
• Union Motion, an electric vehicle company in the United Kingdom.

Latest News

Gigacom published an article on how Damien C. Tanner’s co-founded the company Pusher by accident. According to Gigacom, this happened when he sent a Twitter message publically instead of privately and ended up with a following. In 2017 Forbes featured a piece on how series A funding is not always crucial to launching a successful business. Tanner’s company Pusher was used as an example of this. After raising US$1 million in seed capital, the company chose to be picky about further investment and eventually ended up going it alone.