Ed Bussey - Speaker

Ed Bussey is the CEO of Oxford Science Enterprises and an experienced technology entrepreneur with a diverse career. He joined the Royal Navy at 17 and later studied Natural Science at Cambridge University, where he also started a small publishing business. After serving in the Royal Navy, Ed spent eight years in the UK Diplomatic Service, working on security and counter-terrorism in various roles. In 2000, he co-founded figleaves.com, an early online fashion retailer that was named the “UK Internet Retailer of the Year” in 2004. The company expanded to the US by 2005 and was acquired by N Brown Plc in 2010. In 2007, Ed became the Chief Operating Officer at ZYB, a mobile social networking platform. ZYB was recognized as one of the ten most innovative mobile products of the year by Business Week and was acquired by Vodafone in 2008. In 2011, he launched Quill, a multi-language content production platform for e-commerce, which was recognized as one of the UK's fastest-growing tech businesses by Deloitte. Quill won Best Agency at the eCommerce Awards in 2018 and was acquired by Webedia in 2019, later merging with Jellyfish, where Ed became Chief Solutions Officer. Ed has received many awards, including ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards in 2015 and Disruptor of the Year at the UK Tech Founder Awards in 2018. He was also listed in the Sunday Times Debretts’ 500 most influential people in Britain in 2015 and 2016. In September 2023, he became the CEO at Oxford Science Enterprises, focusing on building transformative businesses in partnership with the University of Oxford.