Lars Fjeldsoe-Nielsen is General Partner at Owl Ventures, the world’s preeminent venture capital firm solely dedicated to education technology. Driven by a deep conviction that education and entrepreneurship are catalysts for social change, he leads Owl’s strategic expansion across Europe, Africa, and global markets, with a focus on breakthrough, AI-driven opportunities within the education sector.
Prior to Owl, Lars was the co-founder of the early stage quantum focused fund 2xN, an investor in Oxford Ionics, recently acquired by IonQ, and – prior to that General Partner at Balderton Capital in London. Some of his early stage investments over the years include Labster, Ulesson, StudySmarter, Quantinuum/Cambridge Quantum Computing (Honeywell Quantum), Monarch Money, Colossal, Yassir, Voi, NoTraffic, Vivino, Monta, Celus, Octant Bio, Kukua, Blue Bottle Coffee (Nestle) and Pocket (Mozilla).
Lars joined Balderton after a decade immersed in Silicon Valley where he held roles at two of the Valley’s best known tech companies. He joined Uber in California when the company was operating in fewer than 20 cities. His role as Vice President resulted in strategic alliances with global entities, including Verizon and Carlos Slim’s América Movil group across Latin America – deals which fuelled Uber’s rapid growth.
Prior to Uber Lars joined Dropbox, where he was one of the company’s first 25 employees. As Head of Mobile, his growth deals with Samsung and other mobile OEMs helped the file-sharing company reach its first 100 million users.
Lars previously held positions at companies that all got acquired, namely Voicesignal (Nuance), Skyhook Wireless (TruePosition), Ness Technologies (Opentable), 3Jam (Skype) and T9 Tegic (AOL).
Lars, who is Danish-Portuguese, grew up across Africa (Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania and Libya) and served with the Danish Royal Danish Guards. He holds an MBA from London Business School where he also served on the board of Trustees, an MSc from Oxford University Keble College and a BSc from King’s College London. A passionate campaigner and fundraiser for the fight against malaria, Lars has filed a patent for genetically modified mosquitoes that light up like fireflies when they carry malaria. He has also led multiple fundraising campaigns supporting education and malaria eradication initiatives.