Meet The Fund Incubator Team

The Fund Incubator team have over 80 years of professional experience in the structuring and marketing of funds, in fund management, administration, and regulation, and ESG management and the work that goes into the front, back and middle offices of a successful fund manager.

Barry Lawson – Managing Partner

dsc_bl-1426Barry Lawson is an English solicitor with over 35 years private equity experience. During this time he has helped 61 private equity funds with a total value of over £10bn. He has held senior positions within major UK private and venture capital firms including 3i Group, Bridgepoint Capital and the UK Government-owned British International Investment Plc. In 2008 he established The Private Equity Consultancy LLP to provide compliance, operational, fundraising and ESG consultancy services to small-mid market private equity investment managers in the UK.

Barry served for over 10 years as a member of the BVCA’s Regulatory Committee and lectured on behalf of InvestEurope (formerly the EVCA), devising and delivering their foundation course for support staff. He was also a course leader and creator of the Regulatory and LegalMaster Class – a 4-day course attracting Group Counsel/COO level attendees from across Europe and the Middle East.

Stephen Geddes – Partner

Stephen Gedsc_stephen-1430mddes founded Mainspring Financial Services Limited in 2010, which provides private fund administration for private equity and venture capital fundsin the UK. In 2013 Mainspring Nominees Limited was founded. Mainspring Nominees is regulated by the FCA and authorised to provide custody and nominee services for private equity fund managers operating EIS funds and managed accounts. Prior to Mainspring Stephen Geddes spent eight years at Pi Capital, the last five years as Chief Op Officer in charge of fund administration and operations. His time at Pi Capital gave him direct experience of the challenges of operating a small private equity fund, from leading the finance, HR and IT functions, structuring several funds and managing investor relations for several hundred investors. At Pi he was directly responsible for the administration of over 30 investment entities ranging in structure from investments held directly by investors, limited partnerships, co-investing vehicles and fund of fund vehicles.

Prior to Pi Capital Stephen worked at Eden Capital where he was focused on developing the private equity division. Before this, he worked as a strategy analyst at BBC Online and Kagan World Media. He started his career at Hambros Bank.

Fiona Melville – Partner

Fiona Melville joins TFI with over 10 years’ experience in UK and International fund ecosystems. Her background is in policy and communications, before focusing on technology companies, their business development and strategy.  She has worked in the UK, France, the Middle East and North and Sub-Saharan Africa, running campaigns and building partnerships including with Tech City (then Tech Nation), the All Party Parliamentary Group for Technology, Activision, Fujitsu, MBDA and KKR as well as thousands of start-ups and scaleups.

Fiona was part of the founding team at ADV, a patient capital platform and £85m VC fund; she worked directly with portfolio companies, with other fund managers as both LP and co-investor, and on the venture platform to support UK ecosystem growth and development. Leaving as Chief Operating Officer, she joined TFI in 2024 as a Director and Partner. She has a particular interest in impact investing and in regulatory strategy.

 

Flora Gray – Chief Operating Officer

Flora Gray was on the founding team and Chief Operating Officer at Regionally, an investment service founded in March 2020 to facilitate private scaleup investments into regional SMEs based outside of London. During her time there, she managed operations, IP creation, technology development, and oversaw the expansion of the internal team and the external professional, investee and investor networks. Flora was also a member of the Investment Committee and was central in investor relations.

The organisation won several awards during her time there, including ‘Most Innovative Investment’ (Southern Enterprise Awards, 2021) and ‘Top Economic Innovator Awards’ (The Economist, 2021), catalysing the decision to make the investment platform developed a white label service available to the industry. Furthermore, the business built a global network of several hundred private investors, a nationwide professional services community and several investee clients.

Prior to Regionally, Flora worked as an investment executive at Rivers Capital Partners, a North East based venture capital firm running several regional funds. She started her career here, where she began formal investment management training and developed her foundational knowledge of fund management and SME finance.

Manveer Singh – Investment Associate

Manveer is an ICAEW ACA with over 4 years of financial services experience as a member of PwC’s Wealth Management team. Primary clients included FTSE 100 Insurers, Institutional Pension Schemes and Alternative Asset clients. This role involved investment valuation work over pooled investment vehicles, portfolio companies, and building relationships with the Financial Controllers, Heads of Valuations and CFOs.

Manveer was also part of a business development team, spun out of the PwC Corporate Finance team. The team focused on revenue generation from Private, Seed to PE-backed businesses – specifically with ESG focused projects in the UK. He has also shown key interests in wider technology, building relationships in the start-up community whilst also being a member of the PwC Global Blockchain community and their Artificial Intelligence community.

His commercial interest in the private business sector – coupled with his experience, and deep interest, in the alternative asset management space – is well-aligned to TFI’s commitment to a robust deal evaluation, investment committee and investment management process for all of our partner funds.

Kateryna Skyvka  –  Monitoring Associate

Kateryna is TFI’s Monitoring Associate, supporting TFI and its clients to meet their regulatory obligations. Kateryna gained a Business with Marketing Degree in 2023 from the Bayes Business School, formerly known as Cass Business School, and brings her organisational and analytical skills to help TFI deliver and enhance its monitoring programme.

Having experience working as a Communications Officer, Event Manager, and Copywriter, Kateryna’s high attention to detail and strong communication skills are well-aligned to support TFI clients’ regulatory needs. Kateryna’s diverse background also includes working as a Business Consultant responsible for developing paywall models for websites. This valuable experience in analysing competitors, market trends, pricing strategies and target audiences developed Kateryna’s problem-solving skills.

Kateryna’s experience of working in dynamic environments is well-aligned with The Fund Incubator’s commitment to supporting emerging Fund Managers, Investment Advisors and Arrangers.